Inside Lego’s New Tricked-Out Denmark Playscape

March 20, 2019 0 By JohnValbyNation

In the quaint town of Billund, Denmark, 30 teens have the ultimate after-school job: disassembling the thousands of creations that will be built each day by visitors to the Lego House, opening September 28. (Hear that? It’s the clattering of 25 million Legos under one roof.) Designed by hotshot Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, the 40,000-square-foot playscape features zones where Lego-loving kids and their equally enthralled parents can dig into a block-filled pool, direct a stop-motion movie, and launch toy cars off a ramp. Visitors can tag photos of their handiwork via RFID wristbands and view them later in the Lego House app. But though the mod museum is tricked out with tech, brickheads will find plenty of tributes to the classic plastic piece. That includes a gallery of masterworks submitted by AFOLs—that’s Adult Fans of Legos, of course—a network of more than 360,000 super-users.

1. Art Gallery

Thirteen-foot-tall T. rexes guarding the creations are each made from a different type of Lego: System, Duplo, and Technic.

2. Tree of Creativity

The Lego House contains one of the largest models in the world: A 22-ton, 50-foot-tall topiary composed of over 6.3 million bricks.

3. Block Archive

The History Collection showcases 500 iconic sets—the 1978 yellow castle is a Lego lover’s Rosebud—as well as a searchable database of other bygone sets.

4. Block Beacon

The building’s boxy design was inspired by Lego bricks. The 2-by-4 block on the roof has a light well through each stud.

5. The Red Zone

A primary-colored waterfall of over 2 million bricks cascades into a Lego pool.

While in Denmark

Eat: Sample 110 variations of smørrebrød, a traditional open-faced sandwich, at the 140-year-old Restaurant Schønnemann.

Stay: Request a view of the canal at 71 Nyhavn, a nattily rustic hotel converted from two 19th-century brick warehouses.

Do: Choose from more than 40 rotating beers at Mikkeller & Friends, a legendary bar helmed by physics teacher turned master brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø.

This article appears in the September issue. Subscribe now.