LEGO flowers exhibition: Key takeaways
- LEGO’s Shanghai exhibition turns its established botanical range into a spectacle, with 380,000 brick flowers covering 800 square metres
- Domestic displays highlight the products’ dual appeal as creative building activities and home decoration
- An accompanying pop-up shop connects the exhibition to purchases, letting visitors take home a smaller version of the idea
Plastic flowers are never a nice touch, but on Shanghai’s West Bund this autumn they’re not looking too bad. Being built of LEGO (乐高) has much to contribute to their charm. The brand has created a garden of 380,000 brick-built flowers at the Tank art centre, turning its botanical range into a public spectacle.
The brand has created a garden of 380,000 brick-built flowers
The exhibition’s centrepiece is an 800-square-metre floral wave – a dense network of stems arranged into a landscape of cascading colour. Indoors, a digital flower environment surrounds visitors with 360-degree screens giving the garden an immersive setting.
A third space brings the spectacle down to a scale workable for the home. It features 18 botanical product arrangements in domestic settings. What you see here is then for sale in a pop-up shop just off from the main installations.
It’s quite something to look at, but no China-market pop-up would be quite complete without a celebrity appearance. LEGO got in actress Ma Sichun for the job, alongside comedians Li Xueqin and Pang Bo.
Building offers a creative activity, while the completed arrangement has a second life as decoration
Taking a broader view, this is an interesting tack for LEGO. Building offers a creative activity, while the completed arrangement has a second life as decoration. The floral range then has potential appeal to adults shopping for themselves or choosing a gift that offers something to do as well as something to display.
The Dao view: Taking LEGO flowers from spectacle to shelf
The exhibition connects two scales of desire: a garden large enough to draw people across Shanghai, and an arrangement small enough to take home. As pop-ups go, this is a smart one. The floral wave gives the brand attention. It then transitions smoothly into the domestic displays and gives shoppers a way to bring a piece of the idea into their home life.
