Ryohei Koike, an associate in Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) walks us through the studio’s most important competition project, the LEGO house, reflecting on the similarities between architecture and playing with LEGO. Throughout his story we learn that the world is saturated with proportions of a LEGO brick, how the project relates to Mona Lisa, Bruce Lee’s philosophy and martial arts, and just how big was the LEGO house project for BIG.
BIG & LEGO
“If BIG had been founded with the purpose of building one single building, it would be the LEGO house.” said Bjarke, the founding partner of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), during a 1st design meeting with the competition team. I’ve worked with Bjarke for 12 years, but this statement is one I will never forget. It was rare for Bjarke to call on a team to address the significance of a competition, let alone deliver an inspirational speech. The philosophy of LEGO has influenced BIG immeasurably. It is not just a toy for the BIG architects, the idea of LEGO’s systematic creativity is at the heart of how BIG approaches architecture. We use logic and reason, along with our imagination, to create surprising yet pragmatic architecture.
At the LEGO store Copenhagen, a LEGO model of BIG’s first built project, Harbor Bath in Copenhagen, is displayed along with dinosaurs and R2-D2. Bjarke has received numerous awards and trophies in his career, but he says the LEGO display of his project touched him the most. Our office is home to an army of LEGOs. Our signage, logo, and stationery are made of LEGOs. Some even tease Bjarke how he is proportionally similar to LEGO mini figures. So it is relatively easy to imagine how thrilled Bjarke must have been when BIG received an invitation to participate in the LEGO House Competition in 2012.
(LEGO signage in BIG office. Harbour Bath LEGO model in the LEGO Copenhagen store )
Before the LEGO House Competition, BIG has done a project called “LEGO tower” in 2009. It was a residential complex competition in Denmark. During the Marshall years, when post-war Denmark was being rebuilt, the state chose to favor prefabricated construction over all other forms of construction. As a result, the in-situ cast concrete industry has almost vanished, leaving the entire building industry based on prefabricated modules. The system was used by Jorn Utzon, a legend of Danish architecture, who sublimated it as “Additive Architecture.” Utzon’s philosophy was reflected on the LEGO TOWER project. BIG presented an unprecedented sculptural project using a single module system. The model was built with LEGO bricks as the ultimate proof for any developer that, if a project can be built out of LEGO bricks, it can’t be that difficult to build in real life. We won the competition, but it got cancelled due to the financial crisis. Still, the model of the LEGO tower has been placed in the middle of the Copenhagen office since the competition showing how BIG has obsessed with LEGO.
(LEGO tower project for a residential competition in 2009)
LEGO Brand House Competition
The objective of the LEGO House competition was to maximize the potential of the site, which was the former City Hall location, a square surrounded by various shops and a community center. The LEGO House aimed to be as unique and inspiring as their products and to become the LEGO epicenter on earth, where families, fans and followers, would meet through fun play and learning. BIG was given five weeks to submit the proposal as part of an invited competition. The participants were free to challenge size, zoning and functionality. Even though the allotted time frame was unusually short, the BIG team was confident they’d meet the deadline. The first week was dedicated to researching the LEGO brand, history, and the context. Usually, the second week is the sketching phase, however, BIG’s triannual study trip was scheduled during week two and three. It is BIG’s tradition to gather all its members from the globe to a designated location for an architectural tour. This particular year, the chosen location was Japan. The event had been organized more than a year in advance and the total number of participants was over 100 people. It was impossible to change the plan for a competition. Therefore, the six competition team members and Bjarke had no choice but to attend. The competition was on every team member’s mind, especially Bjarke’s, throughout the event. On the morning of the trip’s fourth day, the team, received six sketches from Bjarke. At BIG, the team takes the initiative from research, initial brainstorming and design sketches. Only After some directions have been determined, the team presents them to Bjarke, who then provides feedback. It was the first time Bjarke sent sketches before the team actually reached the sketching phase. His sketches in a Moleskine notebook were all different yet all presented strong candidacy for a possible final design. While we were enjoying the event in Japan, the team was anxious to get back to Copenhagen to develop Bjarke’s sketches into actual design schemes.
( Bjarke’s birthday party during BIG’s study trip in Japan. Bjarke visited Japanese masterpieces)
The team returned to the office from the Japan trip, and immediately held a meeting with Bjarke to discuss how to proceed with the project. He had moved to New York in the previous year and was busy laying the groundwork in the United States, so his time in the Copenhagen office was limited. He suggested having at least one video conference every day. VC has become commonplace since the Covid-19 pandemic, but in 2012, the platform we used was not equipped to handle live sharing of screens and materials. Even with the technical difficulties, we held a meeting every day, sometimes multiple times a day, to provide feedback to one another as quickly as possible.
(Sketches sent from Bjarke during the Japan Trip)
Whenever we start a new project, we always begin with identifying the key criteria of the project: what is the biggest problem, what is the greatest potential? Rather than creating arbitrary aesthetic or stylistic designs, all designs are based on the project’s specific requirements. We call this design method “Information Driven Design.” Gathering specific information is necessary to form the design decisions. But just because the issue & potential have been identified, it does not mean that the goal is found. First, you formulate the right questions, then you have to search for the right answers. To find the right answer, we must test a lot of options. To test a lot of options, we usually make tons of models. The LEGO HOUSE project was no exception to this norm. The team was divided into two groups, one studied the sketches from Bjarke in depth (I was on this team), and the other group worked on the basic volume and layout. From each design direction new ideas were formed, and in the end, more than 100 physical models were generated. One of the largest meeting rooms in the Copenhagen office was converted into the project room, but even the largest room became too crowded with numerous models being created day and night. The team’s high motivation and the abstract competition brief made the number of sketches so large that it was challenging to narrow it down to just one.
(The project room for the LEGO House competition)
It takes a village to raise a child
With less than two weeks to go, the team went back to the basics to identify the main concept of the project. LEGO’s idea was to build an entertaining home for the LEGO bricks at the heart of the town of Billund for its citizens and make Billund the world capital for children. LEGO wanted to create an educational and inspirational facility where people can have fun. We were searching for a keyword to formulate the right question. When the team and Bjarke were discussing design options, one of our colleagues came and introduced an old African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child” It means to become a citizen of the world, you need more than the love and care of your parents – you need a society around you. We all stood up and said, “that’s it !!” We thought, why don’t we take all the elements of the LEGO house programs that could always be open – the restaurant, the shop, the auditorium, and frame a big public square at the center. Above the square, all the galleries would form a journey route through the world of LEGO. Like a Mont Saint Michel – half building, half landscape. People of Billund could walk across the square or climb the roofs. Enjoy the views across the town or peek into the galleries. The LEGO House could be viewed as a village for playing and learning – an urban space as much as an architecture. And that became the design direction. The project suddenly began to accelerate. The team knew exactly what to do, the outputs became more fruitful, and Bjarke’s feedback became more specific and detailed. Hundreds of designs and ideas started to evolve through mutation and crossbreeding and naturally one design scheme survived at the end of the process.
( Mont Saint Michel – a hybrid of landscape and architecture. A village square surrounded by public buildings.)
One week before the deadline, the project concept and geometry was finalized, and we kicked off the production for the presentation. There were only three deliverables in the competition guidelines, a Powerpoint presentation, three A0 Boards, and a physical model, which was not mandatory. To show our love for the project, we ignored the minimal deliverables guideline and produced not only a PowerPoint presentation & A0 boards but also a 100 pages booklet, physical models in 1:500, 1:200, 1:100 and a special model built with LEGO bricks with a box inspired by the LEGO architecture series.
At around 6:00 a.m. the day before the deadline, Bjarke came to the office with an armful of freshly baked croissants and coffee as he knew that we had pulled an all-nighter. While we were having the croissants, he said to the team, “this project will be a milestone for BIG in the future, so let’s definitely win it.” Then he sat down in front of a desktop and joined the production, just like everyone else. He started using Illustrator to create beautiful diagrams and wrote almost all the texts for the booklet while providing feedback on drawings, renderings, and models to all of us. I’ve never had the opportunity to work this closely with Bjarke prior to this project. The energy level was at an all-time high, and we worked nonstop until the following morning, wrapping up the presentation just in the nick of time for the deadline.
Four final models in different scales, booklets, PowerPoints, three A0 boards, and all the pinup boards and study models in the project room were all packed into a big office van as a testament to our enthusiasm and love for the project. The project leader, Brian, the partner in charge, David and Bjarke drove the van to Billund early in the morning. After we sent them off, the rest of the team went to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for a quick lunch. After sitting down and ordering, two of us fell fast asleep, and the rest of us ate the food with half-closed eyes, all feeling a sense of accomplishment that we had never felt before.
(One of the presentation models of the LEGO House proposal.)
After a night of rest, we went back to the office to hear from Brian how the presentation went. He told us that each architecture office was assigned a room and told to set up its presentation. Bjarke presented our project to Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the owner and grandson of the founder of LEGO. During the presentation, the various scaled models were used but one in particular stood out from the others; the largest, 1:100. This model was made large enough for people’s heads to go through so that they can view the interior space from multiple perspectives. Brian said at the end of the presentation, when Bjarke handed over the box of our version of LEGO Architecture models to Kjeld, he hugged Bjarke, with tears in his eyes, and thanked him for the great proposal. Everyone was convinced that we won the competition. On the side note, Bjarke and David flew back to Copenhagen for another meeting in the afternoon while Brian had to drive the van back to the office by himself.
After the presentation, we submitted a short animation and waited for the results. We had confidence in our project and the presentation, but as time passed, that confidence began to waver a little. Then on December 5th, 2012, Bjarke sent an email to everyone on the team. The title of the email read “Confidential,” and its body simply said, “We won LEGO! Great Job!” After the announcement, the office was in a festive mood, champagne bottles were opened, and the word WIN was written on a panel attached to a life-size model of a LEGO Bjarke figure, who was watching over the project like a guardian angel. The synergy between BIG and LEGO’s philosophies, and the team’s unity combined with Bjarke’s passion led to the big win.
To this day, no other project has topped the level of enthusiasm I felt during this competition. It was such a special competition from the beginning to the end. Shortly after the announcement, the team was informed to move on to the concept phase from the beginning of the next year, started from an official kick-off meeting and workshops.
(LEGO competition team photo and mini figures version )
Systematic Creativity +
The following year, a three-day workshop/kick-off meeting was held at LEGO’s headquarters in Billund. There, we learned deep knowledge of LEGO and the project’s vision. A meeting with AFOL (ADULT FAN OF LEGO), a group of officially certified LEGO builders was also held. They proposed a keystone gallery on top of the other exhibition boxes for displaying three-dimensional large LEGO model arts. The group also suggested that this gallery should have the proportions of a classic two-by-four Lego brick and circular skylights. It could make the whole building recognizable as a LEGO brick from Google Earth. The other idea they presented was a vault, aka a treasure chamber, where LEGO can preserve unopened boxes of every Lego set that has ever been made, in a completely protected space underneath the building, design to withstand even a nuclear war.
(Ideas sketches from the 1st workshop)
When we kicked off the concept phase, we realized that this project’s design process was quite different from that of a normal project. Every design was reviewed to ensure that it did not deviate from the philosophy and logic of LEGO, and that it is developed in the manner of Systematic Creativity rather than an artistic approach. Since it is a building designed as the home of LEGO, we made one dogma – whatever we did would have to be buildable with LEGO bricks. As we started diving into the proportions of LEGO bricks, there was a lightbulb moment. When you scale an iconic 2×4 stud LEGO brick up to 30 x 60cm, its height becomes exactly that of the riser of standard stair step (18cm.) So almost without translation, the proportions of LEGO bricks already saturate the world around us. LEGO proportions are already nested in the geometries of everything manmade.
However, one notable design change came from rather intuitive and by coincidence. Since the competition phase, we have always used a neutral white for the exterior walls, floors, and interiors. It was inspired by the idea that the exhibitions should take central focus, not the building. But the truth was Bjarke’s fascination with minimalism and the beautiful architecture he saw during the trip to Japan. In particular, the Tadao Ando, Sou Fujimoto, and SANAA, inspired the design. During the competition, Bjarke was constantly striving to create minimalistic exteriors and interiors and eliminated all colors from the architecture. But a few days before the final presentation of the “revised concept phase,” Bjarke returned to the office from his vacation and opened his remarks to the team with the following words: “Let’s make all the floors very colorful!!” At first, we had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that in an RGB color model, the three primary colors – Red, Green, and Blue – are added together to create various other colors. This natural logic is extended to the LEGO house color scheme – using the official LEGO brick molding colors as a basis – for an analogous expression of the individual experiences in each box that altogether add up to a communal whole, with the affirmation of maximum transformation in the white Keystone Gallery. When we tried out this proposal, the project changed drastically and came to life. It became a simple and elegant Mediterranean mountain village with a beautiful white ceramic tile facade. On closer inspection, while a colorful playground invites you to climb, explore and engage with the House, the surrounding space becomes more identifiable and zoned, resulting in a more playful architecture. Bjarke effortlessly broke our preconceived notions of using only white out of nowhere. However, the source of this idea was later revealed to us. He visited Jamaica on the holiday and was fascinated by the flood of colors in the country. So, the obsession with delicate, Japanese minimalist spaces that he had gained on the Japan trip was suddenly lost. The team laughed, agreed that such a thing could happen, and convinced that an architect should always travel.
(Contemporary modern exterior vs colorful active interior spaces)
(Build-up diagrams)
Our Mona Lisa
On September 28, 2017, the Lego house opened its door five years after the competition had begun. At the ceremony, Bjarke said, “Lego House is a literal manifestation of the infinite possibilities of the Lego brick – one that embodies the notion of systematic creativity and allows children of all ages countless opportunities to create their worlds and to inhabit them through play. At its finest, that is what architecture and Lego play is all about: empowering people to imagine new worlds that are more exciting and expressive than the status quo – and providing them with the tools and skills to make them a reality.” With this project, BIG made a long-held dream come true. The team dedicated everything to reach the LEGO company motto “Only the best is good enough.”
The art of designing a house is like the art of painting a portrait. The beauty of a portrait lies in the artist’s ability to capture the subject’s essence; the appearance and physical attributes of the subject, but more importantly, the qualities that might normally escape the eye. So, the portrait resembles the subject more than a photograph- it goes deeper and reflects and reveals the core. A beautiful portrait is 100% the expression of the portrayed – and at the same time, 100% the expression of the artist. The LEGO House has become a proud masterpiece for BIG, like Mona Lisa for Leonardo da Vinci. One difference is that instead of being displayed in a museum and remaining forever unchanged, the LEGO House will never be complete. It will go through constant transformation by systematic creativity, the excitement of its visitors, children and the people of Billund.
( LEGO House Aerial picture, the pixel melt stair seating )
(Team photo during the opening day)
Advice for future architects
My advice for young architects is to follow Bruce Lee’s philosophy. “Be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle.” If you develop a stylistic obsession early and are inflexible as an architect, I believe you limit possible outputs. BIG’s projects are always born out of their context. We spend time analysing the project’s conditions and parameters to establish the greatest potentials and the limitations. Once we figure out the criteria, we transform the negative ones into the driving force for the design process rather than treating them limitations. This approach helps to develop unique and strong narratives for each project.
Developing a specific architectural style is similar to mastering Karate. You train and search for your ultimate fighting style through millions of repetitions, and then you attempt to dominate an opponent with your style. Some famous architects’ buildings have their ultimate design styles, often seem the same everywhere, whether museums in Spain or office buildings in New York. It works sometimes but sooner or later, you would encounter some obstacles if you ignore context and only pursue your own style. Perhaps BIG’s approach is more like Aikido than Karate. Aikido uses the opponent’s’ force and converts it into a counterforce against them. The same concept could be applied for architectural design. Design decisions should not be based on stylistic obsessions but knowledge and observation of each context and site. In that way, obstacles become part of your design concept and you don’t need to worry about running out of ideas or approaches because the different contexts would always inform you how to react differently. “Be water my friend”
Ryohei Koike
Ryohei Koike is associate in Bjarke Ingels Group in London. He joined the practice in 2010 as a Design Assistant in Copenhagen.
He leads numerous projects in both BIG Copenhagen & London, specializing in the conceptual design of commissions, and competition design entries. He has a keen eye for design, working sensitively in any given context, and turn the biggest challenge & potential into architecture design. These skills led him to work in different countries, developing various range of scale projects from concept to deliver, across residential, commercial, and cultural projects.
Prior to joining BIG, Ryohei worked at several acclaimed international practices in both Japan and USA while studying at Southern California Institute of Architecture, where he received his Bachelor of Architecture degree.
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Ryohei Koike
Ryohei Koike is associate in Bjarke Ingels Group in London. He joined the practice in 2010 as a Design Assistant in Copenhagen.
He leads numerous projects in both BIG Copenhagen & London, specializing in the conceptual design of commissions, and competition design entries. He has a keen eye for design, working sensitively in any given context, and turn the biggest challenge & potential into architecture design. These skills led him to work in different countries, developing various range of scale projects from concept to deliver, across residential, commercial, and cultural projects.
Prior to joining BIG, Ryohei worked at several acclaimed international practices in both Japan and USA while studying at Southern California Institute of Architecture, where he received his Bachelor of Architecture degree.
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