Lego should be simple, not smart

The introduction of tech to the most brilliantly basic of building blocks is an odd kind of futurism.

- Edwin Heathcote

Frank Lloyd Wright famously claimed that playing with Froebel kindergarten blocks kindled his fascination for form-making.

Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller and Charles Eames started with the brightly coloured geometric wooden pieces too. Then came Meccano: look at Norman Foster’s HSBC Tower in Hong Kong or Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s of London, the lineage is clear.

So what about Lego? The world’s bestselling constructional toy last week launched its Smart Bricks but perhaps it is looking the wrong way. Lego’s legacy resides in its inherent simplicity.

Bjarke Ingels, the Danish architect who designed the Lego House visitor attraction in Billund, where the company started in 1932, claims that the simple Lego brick is modern architecture’s ideal proportional unit, its golden section. And the huge toy company has been keen to suggest it inspires the builders of the future.

Lego markets ranges of famous buildings (from Sydney Opera House to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater to Notre-Dame); it even created a range of white bricks aimed specifically at architectural model-making.