LEGO Imagination Center

This retail store in the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment district entertains, teaches, and sells merchandise.

Created from a 1970s shingled retail building, it was divided into three parts: a central two-story pavilion that displays and sells traditional LEGO brick toys, an attached licensed products pavilion, and an outdoor playground.

As is appropriate in this vacation world, fantasy rules, with the entire place designed as an imaginary LEGO construction site. The original, shingled building was treated to brightly colored metal panels, fenestration, and doors in character with LEGO's color system and toys. Over-scaled LEGO bricks and their ubiquitous play figures were found throughout the site and building. The bricks became columns, portals, and walls on the exterior. Inside, brick arches formed a central two-story octagonal space with a dome "starlit" with fiber optics. The play figures chased each other around, inside and out.

At the special licensed product pavilion, theatrical scrims stretched below the ceiling with backlit leaf patterns. Its backyard playhouse theme continued with a life-size tree made of regular-size LEGO bricks and board fence partitioning.

Lighting was also placed carefully to animate and dramatize individual scenes of LEGO creatures. Some creatures are sited outside and away from the building to attract visitors. These include "actual size" sea monsters and aliens created from real LEGO bricks. A few arose out of the adjacent lake, others stood around the store entries as photo opportunities.

Centerbrook’s original design has since been renovated.

Client

LEGO Systems

Location Lake Buena Vista, FL
Size 7,400 Sq. Ft.
Features renovation
Program retail pavilion, outdoor playground
Year Completed 1997
Photo Credit Steven Brooke

MORE INFORMATION

Awards

  • Design Award, AIA Connecticut