Citations › Citation ID: 158

C158. BOOK: Daniel Konstanski, The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks: The Inside Story of a Design Icon (Unbound, 2022), p. 298-299.

During the 2000s, some designers had a ritual of making pilgrimages to the new-element wall. This is the place where prototype or freshly minted parts are displayed to let designers know they are available or to comment if development remains ongoing. Every piece has an intended use, of course, but one of the keys for the designers of LEGO Creator Expert and others who were experimenting with big builds was to not see purpose but instead see shapes. Pieces which caught an eye would be gathered, usually multiple copies of them, and brought back to desks. Designers might stack, place or position two at an angle to each other, looking for unique interactions, relationships and shapes. This was how Unikitty tails ended up being used as an architectural element in the roof of Modular Building 10246 Detective’s Office. Lined up together they yielded a very distinctive and pleasing look. Often these unique uses of parts are figured out ahead of time in isolation and then incorporated into models when opportunities present themselves. To this day, the team responsible for Modular Buildings had remained small and close-knit. They alone come up with subject matter for each year’s structures, and sometimes ideas sparked by pilgrimages to the new-element wall will lead to whole buildings, or at least parts of their architecture.

The new-element wall became a popular destination for LEGO designers, who found new ways to leverage parts in unexpected ways, especially as architectural details within the Modular Building Series.