A Photograph, a Piece of Memory

Aug 2019

In recalling my childhood memories, nothing seems as overwhelmingly valuable as LEGO. It is not an overstatement that my recollections of the catchy moments in the past always coincide with my collections of the Lego sets. To me, the joy of Christmas, New Year, or birthday means just another brand-new Lego set added to my collections. In my most obsessed days, I measure the value of everything with the worth of the set of Lego I desire, a dinner outside can be simultaneously converted to a fifth value of the Lego Millennium Falcon.

It is no wonder how unreal I felt when I finally stepped into the Vault in Lego house in Billund, Denmark, a true memory lane to me. My mother captured the moment when I was lost in the wonderland of my childhood dream. I was staring at a wall full of Lego, completely shocked by the massive and exclusive display of those over 500 most iconic collections Lego has made, from the earliest to the most recent. I have always been considering building plastic bricks gives me a lot of fun of building, and a sense of fulfillment once completed. However, at that moment, when I was walking through the archives of the history of Lego, I started to realize the true magical power of this seemingly non-extraordinary plastic brick. I saw the glamour of creativity, encouraging us to build everything we see or we imagine, now also built as the Tree of Creativity with over 6 million bricks at the center of this house. I saw the focus, which never wavered in its history of almost 90 years. I saw the value of “playing well”, which was the literal meaning of Lego, and which has exactly helped shape and build our dream.

At that moment, I was also thinking of building my personal memory lane of Lego. It, of course, will include the first set I got as a birthday gift when I was 3 years old, the whole set of city series from the police station to the European towns, and the expert series with which I learned the basic mechanics. It must include my most cherished Star Wars collections, for which I have sacrificed almost a year’s luxury of dining out. I can remember every scenario when I got each of them, no words rather than “overjoyed” would be appropriate to describe my feeling at that time.

If we were asked to show our dream, many of us would give a vivid account, some would resort to a paintbrush, and however, I would definitely use Lego to build it out. I have been persistently building my ideal school with Lego ever since I went to primary school, dreaming about a larger playground, a brighter dining hall, and more common spaces for fun and interaction. I hope we can perceive the changes in seasons, the smell of nature instead of being confined to the classrooms. Inspired by a passion for building schools, my father, an architect, incorporated my ideas into his design of a new school in Zhejiang Province. When I finally saw my dream come true, I felt the power of designing to make a change and decided to take it as my future career.

This picture recurs from time to time in my memory, freezing the moment when I am lost in where my childhood dream rests, and quite possibly, where my future dream starts.