Jesus Diaz - The Secrets of LEGO House: Design, Play, and Wonder in the Home of the Brick

DEDICATION:
FOR MY SON MAX
AND MY DAD,
WHO GAVE ME ALL THE
BRICKS TO BUILD MY LIFE.

LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Minifigure, the Brick and Knob
configurations, the DUPLO and the DUPLO logo, FRIENDS and the FRIENDS logo,
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& 2021 Lucasfilm Ltd.

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WIZARDING WORLD characters, names and related indicia
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Photographs copyright LEGO House

Photographs on , 95 (left top and
bottom), , 135
(bottom), and by Jess Daz.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-8229-2 (hc), 978-1-7972-0244-0 (ebook)

Design by Sara Schneider.

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When I first joined the LEGO House project years ago, one of the many conversations we had as a team was, how do we make it all come to life? Was it going to be a museum or a place to have fun with bricks? Or both? After some consideration, it was clear that it had to be something very different. Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, third-generation owner of the LEGO Group, was the driving force behind the project. His vision was to make this place the Home of the Brick. And that meant that it had to become the physical manifestation of the LEGO brand at its very core: the Learning Through Play philosophy.

We decided to use the Learning Through Play approach to design everything in the LEGO House. In fact, the LEGO House had to be the ultimate expression of the Learning Through Play experience. Every aspect of the building and the experiences, including all 25 million bricks that live within the walls, had to serve that function. And ultimately, it also had to be a fun place where people come to enjoy themselves with family, friends, or colleagues.

Our ambition is that the children and adults who experience the LEGO House will learn something while having fun, but without necessarily knowing they are learning. And our hope is that some visitors will be transformed by the journey in an even deeper way. Perhaps, one day, some of our guests will look back and remember the LEGO House experience that made them want to become an architect, an engineer, or an artistthat tiny moment where everything clicked in their lives.

For us, applying the Learning Through Play philosophy throughout the LEGO House was also a click moment. It was crucial to articulate Kjeld Kirk Kristiansens vision and it became the compass for everything in the building, from the experiences to the way people move from zone to zone. It gave all of our work and planning a definitive, but invisible, purpose. And by doing so, it became the secret of the LEGO House.

This book documents that secret. You can think about this volume as the building instructions to the LEGO House. If you have already been here, perhaps reading about this powerful learning and creativity philosophy will spark your curiosity to dive deeper into itmaybe even use its powers in your own life. And if you havent visited the LEGO House yet, maybe it will move you to come to Billund and take the journey yourself.

Freshly minted minifigure heads tumble down the line at a LEGO factory.

The LEGO Duck, shown here on display at the LEGO Idea House, was released in 1936 and is iconic of the early wooden toys that the company produced.

The first time I visited Billund in 2008, I was going through a rough patch in my personal life. I had left sunny Madrid with my then wife to live in ominous London. It wasnt a good fit, and the iron sky permanently hanging two feet above my head didnt help things. Still, I remember that the day I arrived in that tiny town in Denmark, I was happy. After spending my younger years playing with LEGO bricks in the company of my three siblings and my dad, I was in Billund on assignment. My editor at Gizmodo.com had sent me to write a series of articles on anything cool you can find there. And oh boy, did I hit the jackpot of all things cool. I was a pilgrim about to enter the Mecca of my childhood dreams.

The LEGO factory left me, a total nerd, speechless. I saw giant molding machines churning out 2.16 million bricks per minute from an endless flow of ABS plastic heated to 450 degrees Fahrenheit (235 degrees Celsuis). Hundreds of robots took those pieces and put them in 68-foot-tall (20.7-meter-tall) cathedrals, vertigo-inducing storage rooms that hold 19 billion LEGO elements per year waiting to be packaged into sets and sent all over the world. With my head spinning, I thought this was going to be the best moment of the trip. But that actually came later in the day, when the companys chaperone took me to a place called the LEGO Idea House.