You can never be too old to play with LEGOs. Yesterday, the beloved brand released its latest series, LEGO Architecture Studio.
Endorsed by REX architecture, Sou Fujimoto Architects, SOM, MAD Architects, Tham & Videgård Arkitekter, and Safdie Architects, the set includes a guidebook written in collaboration with leading architects and edited by Christopher Turner. Click here for a preview (PDF).
Every toolkit includes over 1,200 monochromatic LEGO bricks, slopes, planes, and more that let you learn the fundamentals of design in a LEGO context. And instead of the usual step-by-step manual, the kit has a 272-page guidebook full of tips, techniques, inspiration, and even intuitive exercises to really get your creativity flowing.
At $150 a set, the price is pretty steep. But in comparison to actual building costs and having complete freedom with your project? It's probably worth it.
14 Comments
"But in comparison to actual building costs and having complete freedom with your project? It's probably worth it."
Say what? These are more restrictive than regular old school lego blocks. Hilarious.
Somebody grab me a can of white spray paint. I've got an idea.
I'm still unclear as to the intended market. It looks like a set designed to teach the principles of Starchitecture to the uninitiated, especailly if you look at the preview of the 'instruction manual'. Make a model, take a photo, add lines and trees as afterthoughts, don't include people.
I have a lot of problems with the scale- this set looks like its trying to encourage models smaller than an iphone. Sure, as professionals, we make small sketch models to work out massing strategies, but almost always in the context of a larger site model. It seems to be deliberately encouraging the conception of architecture as a series of autonomous formal gestures which look good at 1:500.
It's ironic that in the old photo featured in the manual preview, the kid is building a house to minifig scale, not the "looks good next to the 17" iMac" scale.
I don't know how you played with Lego sets as a kid, but when I would build stuff, it would mostly be stages for minifig activities. Elaborate pavilions for minifig mortal kombat tournaments, secret lairs, castles and forts, basically bits of a tiny world. The point of the minifig was to provide a point of human scale, so you could shrink yourself down and explore the world you'd created in a tiny plastic avatar. I guess phenomenologists are born, not constructed.
1,200 monochromatic rectangular blocks. The kids will say it is BORING. Kids have a way of speaking the truth.
It's not for kids, note the $150 price tag.
Yes, but where can I get the kit for this??
Herzog & de Meuron's Lego House ("One Specific Room" - Basel, 1984)
http://www.herzogdemeuron.com/index/projects/complete-works/026-050/028-lego-house.html
If they really wanted to teach the "fundamentals of design in a LEGO context " the Hero Factory system might be more appropriate with its skeletal frame and snap on skins. Traditional legos are all about stacking bricks...gross.
"You can never be too old to play with LEGOs." - Because only adults would arbitrarily confine their pallet to white.
God, I love white.
http://www.designcoding.net/n-grid/
the above is all any growing girl or boy needs to learn about architecture, so until someone makes this to sell, all other kits are efforts to collect mommies hard earned bacon.
...inspiring a whole new generation to quickly change majors in the first semester.
endorsed by architects who stack blocks on blocks.
Scale aside, it seems like it could be helpful for Landscape Design/Architecture students.
what about cuuuurves?
cuuuurves?
gotta invite the ladies down into the conversation pit, yo!
Nice idea. The problem here is that for the $150 price tag, and that the overall size and scale is too small, there is no value, here. LEGO must make their blocks MUCH bigger and include landscape elements such as trees, if they want people to buy their products.
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