... it is, in a special way, an architectural history. “A small interior world of color and form now came within grasp of small fingers,” wrote Frank Lloyd Wright about his 9-year-old self in a 1943 autobiographical sketch. “These ‘Gifts’ came into the gray house” and “made something live here.” These were the famous Froebel Blocks, educational wooden building blocks in systematic shapes and sizes developed in the 1840s by Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten. — nytimes.com

After a freewheeling round of discussions, Snøhetta’s New York office settled on a unique challenge: building a Lego structure that captured the plastic bricks’ unique relationship to gravity. “A Lego building has a lightness that a real building doesn’t have to contend with,” says Craig Dykers, Snøhetta’s co-founder. “We thought wouldn’t it be interesting to capture the feeling of gravity in a Lego block, where gravity actually has very little influence in many ways on its structure...” — wired.com

[...] after months of blood, sweat and tears a team of students from Wilmington, Delaware, broke the Guinness World Record and built the world's tallest Lego tower. For the students, this victory was personal. They struck a powerful blow to their Lego arch-rivals, previous record-holder, the city of Prague.

The American Lego tower stands over 112 feet tall, and is made of more than 500,000 bricks! — lego.gizmodo.com

"We hoped the canals would simply make it easier to move around the city, for civilians and police but the reality is Water Level is one giant port of entry for whoever has the cash."
- Yoko Aramaki, City Planner — Flickr

The LEGO Group today revealed the design of the experience center “The LEGO House”. The center, which will be built in Denmark, illustrates the systematic creativity of LEGO bricks and is expected to attract 250,000 visitors annually. — aboutus.lego.com

“It is one of our great dreams at BIG that we are now able to design a building for and with the LEGO Group. I owe a huge personal debt to the LEGO brick, and I can see in my nephews that its role in developing the child as a creative, thinking, imaginative human being becomes ever stronger in a world in which creativity and innovation are key elements in virtually all aspects of society,” says Bjarke Ingels, founder and partner, BIG. — lego.com

In celebrating the 50th anniversary of the iconic building blocks being introduced into Japan, LEGO’s Japanese subsidiary sponsored a cross-country workshop in which over 5000 people in 6 different regions collaborated to create a gigantic map of Japan.The pieces that were assembled at each site then traveled to Tokyo, where they were put on display for one massive LEGO map. — spoon-tamago.com

The world's tallest lego tower with more than 50,000 bricks stands in front of Seoul's Olympic Stadium. The lego tower measuring 31.9 meters took five days to build and broke the previous record set in France at 31.6 meters. — youtube.com

Only four people in the United States carry the official designation of Lego Master Model Builder. And 23-year-old Andrew Johnson of Illinois is the newest — and youngest — to earn the title. — npr.org

F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab are pleased to present the Free Universal Construction Kit: a matrix of nearly 80 adapter bricks that enable complete interoperability between ten* popular children’s construction toys. By allowing any piece to join to any other, the Kit encourages totally new forms of intercourse between otherwise closed systems—enabling radically hybrid constructive play, the creation of previously impossible designs, and ultimately, more creative opportunities for kids. — fffff.at

A quirky Montreal landmark has won an international competition among Lego enthusiasts – but the thrill of victory has been tempered by the sting of rejection.

The Habitat 67 housing complex won an internet vote, beating out iconic structures like Paris' Eiffel Tower, Rome's Coliseum and the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C. — cbc.ca

Working with Suzan Wines, co-founder of I-Beam Design, Marks dreamed up the concept based on both Archie’s love for the bricks and her own affection for geometric, abstract design and Lego-like colors, which carries through the rest of the apartment. To install the wall, they enlisted Sean Kenney, one of only five people in the country licensed by the Lego company to undertake projects as ambitious as, say, a four-foot, 13,000-piece replica of the Empire State Building. — nymag.com

Lego has become this former Northbrook architect's life. Tucker is now a "Lego Certified Professional," one of the 13 artists and educators in the world endorsed by Lego to use its bricks in their projects. Though only Tucker has parlayed this into a Lego toy line, he would be fast to correct you: Lego is not a toy, it's a medium, and Lego Architecture is only part of what he has accomplished with plastic bricks. — featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com