In 2017, in the centre of Billund, a man-made mountain was constructed. On the ground, the clean, crisp, white building looks like an over the top modernistic building, designed to look different, just for the sake of it, however, when you look down from above, you realise this building closely resembles a pile of various different coloured lego bricks.
This building is the LEGO House, a self-titled, home of the brick, a one-stop-shop for everything LEGO. A stone's throw away from the family home of Ole Kirk Christiansen, the founder of the prolific company, this state of the art building was built to demonstrate everything great about the plastic brick, as well as to celebrate the company's history and its journey from a small producer of wooden toys to one of the biggest brands in the children's toys market.
On two corners of the building, there are two sides that seem to have melted away, allowing guests to scale further up the building, as you progress up the building, various play equipment, each designed to represent different themes as well as glass floors allowing you to see inside the building itself, providing guests with a sneak peek into the experience. Our favourite section was the one that features several swings, providing a brilliant view across Billund as you swung higher and higher to see further and further over the white wall in front of you.
At the very top of the building is the final brick, featuring glass studs, each marked with the Lego logo, as any lego brick should be, which also gave a view into the masterpiece gallery, an area filled with fan-made creations. The view from the top was spectacular, allowing you to see the nearby Legoland resort, as well as Billund airport. After admiring the view we eventually made our way back down and went into the LEGO house itself.
Our experience began in LEGO Square, a free to access open plan area featuring models of some of the LEGO family, a few areas for children to play, and access to the three restaurants, ‘Brickaccino’, a small Cafe serving many hot beverages and sweet treats, ‘Le Gourmet’, a fine dining restaurant with a LEGO twist and ‘Mini Chef’, a unique dining experience that we would visit later.
During our visit there was a very special exhibition on LEGO Square, a 1:1 scale model of a Bugatti Chiron built entirely out of LEGO Technic pieces, from wing mirrors to the engine, every single piece of the vehicle was made from LEGO, it really was an impressive sight! Did we mention that when fully assembled it is also driveable?
After admiring the gorgeous vehicle for some time, we headed to the ticket desk and our tickets, or more specifically, our wristbands featuring an integrated Near Field Communication (NFC) chip was handed to us Unsure of what these wristbands did, we headed to the lockers within the building to put our bags away and found our first use of the wristbands.
As we put in our bags we noticed there was an absence of anywhere to insert coins or even a key to secure the locker. As we shut the door we spotted a glowing blue ring on the outside and placed one of our wristbands upon it (apparently any contactless card could be used, free of charge). A small mechanical whir was heard and It was at that point the locker was secured and we could make our way inside the experience.
The team stepped up to the turnstiles and tapped our wristband on the panel, “Welcome Joss!”, the screen exclaimed to me as the gates opened and let me in to frolic and run wild, I started to run in and get stuck in to the many activities the LEGO House had to offer before realising I had to wait for the others...
Once they were in, we were confronted by an elegant square stairway that travelled up through the centre of the ground floor of the experience. In the middle of the stairwell held the largest lego model any of us had ever seen, ‘The Tree of Creativity’. The model is 15 meters high and is built from six million LEGO bricks, it was an impressive sight and contained amazing details, including various references to iconic LEGO models throughout the years, such as the yellow, LEGO castle. We could have looked at this all day but we knew we had to press on through the house and therefore we headed all the way to the top of the stairs.
This led us into the previously mentioned ‘Masterpiece Gallery’ that we saw whilst peering through the glass skylights earlier. The white walls make this area feel like a fancy modern art gallery and features LEGO builds in glass cabinets around the edge of the room as well as three mighty sculptures of various dinosaurs made from different LEGO pieces within the centre of the room.
Surrounding the gallery are the main areas of the LEGO house, each corresponding with a different colour brick which each relate to a different theme of play, each featuring various experiences based around that theme:
Red Zone: This zone is all about creativity, at LEGO Brick Builder, dive underneath the giant LEGO waterfall and grab whatever bricks you want to build whatever you want, once you have finished your masterpiece, head to the Creative Lab where each month a new activity is revealed, during our visit we were invited to create 2D Pixel art out of 1x1 LEGO bricks.
Green Zone: This zone is all about communication, Observe the curious life of the mini-figures at World Explorer, a large room filled with three large lego builds, filled with an insane amount of detail, look through the trees of the mountain and spot Velociraptors, look in the streets of the Metropolis and spot Doc Brown climbing the clock tower and on the Island shores spot Captain Hook on his boat about to set sail to Neverland. I think for the team at TPG, this was the most impressive part of the experience.
At the character creator, you can make your ideal mini figure and put them on the front of the hottest magazines! Featuring a wide array of body parts and accessories you are sure to find exactly what you need!
In the Story Lab, you can create your very own movie LEGO Movie trailer, once you are seated at your booth, you are presented with a city set featuring barns, shops and a tram you can create whatever your heart desires using stop motion animation techniques. We had an absolute blast at this experience and expect to see our creations in cinemas soon!
Yellow Zone: This zone is about Imagination and Emotions, where you can create Flowers, Insects and Fish, all out of LEGO of course, in different activities. Learn how to create the perfect LEGO flower and plant it in the LEGO meadow in Flower Designer, Create a LEGO Insect at Critter Creator and watch how they come alive and wriggle about in various activities and discover a new breed of an aquatic creature in Fish Designer.
Blue Zone: This zone is all about logic and problem-solving. At Test Driver, you can create a dream LEGO vehicle and test it in two challenges, one being a race with other guests to see whose vehicle is fastest and the other being a ramp with a circular target, if you fly your vehicle down the ramp and through the target you will be rewarded with cheers and a slow-motion replay of your epic stunt!
At City Architect you are challenged to try and create the perfect city, build your city buildings and connect up to the streets to keep the citizens happy.
Robo Lab lets you take control of a team of robots who have been sent on a mission to the Arctic to help rescue archaeologists that have become frozen. Your mission is to work as a team and unfreeze the mini figures so they can free the Wooly Mammoths. You control the robots by programming movements into the robot using touch screens in front of you, with the option to move in any direction and then either use a flamethrower to unfreeze the minifigs or an ice spray ability to create paths across the melting arctic landscape so that your vehicle can access other parts of the map.
After visiting everything the main zones had to offer it was time to head downstairs however, the colourful brick filled walls started to slowly get darker and darker until reds and yellows became greys and blacks.
We had landed in the basement, known as the History Collection, essentially a wondrous vault celebrating LEGO’s history.
It begins at the beginning of LEGO, from its start creating wooden toys to where they are today. As you walk around and view the various cabinets explaining the history you eventually come to the main vault itself, a large rectangular room with every wall covered in glass cabinets, and within those cabinets, the most extensive collection of LEGO sets we have ever seen.
Much like the outside perimeter, this goes from the first sets released to those released in recent years showing a real shift in how the sets have developed with them slowly featuring popular franchises such as Harry Potter, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
As well as the outer walls of this room filled with LEGO sets, within the centre of the room were two circular knee-height displays featuring Technic construction vehicles in one and trains sets in another. As well as this, you could use many tablets in the room to browse through the entire collection of LEGO sets to find your favourite!
As we headed back up to the main floor the final experience is the Six Brick Factory, a small production line creating red 3x3 bricks. As you scan your wristband at the terminal, you are generated a card featuring your unique six brick combination as a set of six red bricks as a souvenir. These bricks are injection moulded, packaged and dropped into a storage box in front of your feet so you know that the bricks you received were made mere moments ago!
Mini Chef
After being overwhelmed by everything LEGO House had to offer, we decided it was time to head back into LEGO Square to grab something to eat and there was only one option for us… Mini Chef.
Mini Chef is a unique dining experience, almost similar to Rollercoaster Restaurant, however, here, you can physically build your meal. As we sat down at our table, we were greeted with a bag of LEGO bricks each, these were for more than just playing with those, as our menu explained that by joining together each brick (1 of each colour) and scanning into the machine attached to our table we would create our meal for the mini chef’s to prepare.
We ordered our drinks to the table using the machine and one by one scanned our meal choices by inserting it into the machine via a piece of apparatus that reminded us of a floppy disk! As soon as it was entered, the machine displayed our choices and asked us if it was correct, and not surprisingly it was! We tried to trick it a few times by placing the bricks in various different positions and every time it knew what we wanted.
We placed our order and enjoyed our drinks until, suddenly, alarm bells! Our screen springs into action and the mini chefs in the kitchen are running around frantically, getting our dishes prepared. They send our meal out on a conveyor belt and the screen explains that our meal is the one in the green boxes. We look towards the wall and at the top we see three green boxes meander around the corner, and, like children, all of us jump from our seat and run to the drop off point.
To greet us were two robots, one wearing a red hat and one wearing a green one, who, rather ecstatically, wave in our general direction (whilst occasionally giving themselves high-fives) as our food makes its way down a slow-moving spiral. Once it reached the robots, the food stopped and the friendly robots pushed it towards us so we could grab it.
With food in hand and stacked up high (because, of course the boxes are stackable like LEGO bricks…) we made our way back to the table and tucked it, what awaited us was a delight, lovely prepared food that was extremely tasty, what a great experience this is for adults and children alike!
Conclusion
After finishing our food and paying our bill (collected by humans!) we suddenly had a drastic realisation… our time at LEGO House was over! An experience we thought we would get through extremely quickly actually occupied us for more than four hours! All of us agreed we would come back in a heartbeat as it really was a LEGO fans paradise.
The LEGO House is the self-titled home of the brick, a place for fans of all ages to come and indulge in a world filled with brightly coloured bricks and the lego group have created a masterpiece in guest experiences, with it being clear that every single person involved in this project was passionate to create something great, and to no surprise to anyone, they have.
