What is it like designing a LEGO set based on a real-life place that is idyllic and iconic? Blocks goes inside the design process behind LEGO Ideas 21359 Italian Riviera with the team of LEGO designers who brought the location to the brick…
The team of designers behind the newly launched LEGO Ideas 21359 Italian Riviera — including the fan designer who came up with the concept — share their process for capturing the magic of the real-life location using LEGO bricks.
Many LEGO Ideas sets are based either on an existing Intellectual Property (IP), such as 21354 Twilight The Cullen House or 21357 Disney Pixar Luxo Jr., while others follow nothing but the fan designer’s incredible imagination, such as 21353 The Botanical Garden. But something like 21359 Italian Riviera doesn’t quite follow either path — it’s not a licensed set, but it’s also not fully original.
This posed a challenge for the design team, who had to construct an accurate Riviera town while maintaining an accessible building style that would fit in an official LEGO Ideas set. Creative Lead Jordan David Scott, Senior Model Designer Mary Wilson and Design Master Beatrice Amoretti, alongside fan designer Alex Sahli, all have insights into the process.
A love of the Riviera was always ingrained in the project, beginning right when fan designer Alex Sahli started building the original submission.
“I would say Vernazza was probably the biggest inspiration for me originally,” Alex shares. “But every town had at least one little detail incorporated from it. I want to say Rio Maggiore as well, especially in the final design. I feel like it resembles that town the most. So it took a little bit from everywhere, but some had more emphasis than others.”
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Most of Alex’s references came from exploring the villages online in preparation for not just building the project, but visiting the Riviera himself. “I was planning for an upcoming trip,” he says. “I was getting really excited about it. I love travel and architecture, and thought that this looks like the perfect thing to do in LEGO bricks.
“So I pulled up Google Earth. I walked through the cities and got a bunch of reference material. And I think the first thing I did was just make sure I had the colours right, because that’s important. Then I just went from there, made sure the angles were good, that I had lots of texture and just fun stories.”
When the project passed to the LEGO Ideas design team, the model had to strike a tricky balance between staying true to Alex’s original design as well as the iconic Italian coastline, all while fitting in a LEGO Ideas–sized box.
“We had a lot of additional reference,” says Senior Model Designer Mary Wilson. “And we also have a local expert with us on our team, so not only did we have photographs and books of Cinque Terre and the surrounding area, but we also had first hand experience to base things off.”
“I come from the region, from Liguria,” Design Master Beatrice Amoretti smiles. “It was super fun to just bring back lots of books from the area. And whenever I was going back for holidays and visiting my parents, I was taking pictures of architectural details or colours and bringing them back to the design team.”
That reference material included just about everything that the final model would need, from buildings and businesses to the surrounding terrain.
“I had more of a beach in my original design, and that didn’t make the final cut,” Alex says. “A lot of these towns don’t have a full beach. Some of them have small sandy beaches, but a lot of it just drops into the sea.”
“The coastal regions do have a lot of rock and drop into the water,” Mary adds. “So the little area between the boat launch and the rest of the dock is sort of like that rocky, sand build up that you’ll get right there. But we felt that the beach wasn’t exactly Cinque Terre.”
As for the village itself, each shop, home and minifigure was carefully considered to ensure it fit the aesthetics of a coastal Italian town.
“I think keeping the gelato shop was definitely really important,” laughs Creative Lead Jordan David Scott. “And some kind of fishing store. Plus some of the architectural details like the antennas on the roofs and things just to make it feel really busy, like the hanging clothes. But then we talked in the very beginning about the minifigures and who we would include, and we really wanted to have an old grandmother teaching a grandchild how to make pasta. Just to have a really nice, charming story.”
The desire to have a story behind each character can be seen in all of the set’s 10 minifigures and the places they live.
“We wanted a diverse range of ages and genders,” Jordan continues. “So that’s why we talked about our grandmother and grandson. And then there’s the younger people living in the building upstairs. There’s the gelato shop owner, the fisherman. And then my favourite is the fashionable older gentleman. There’s a tie in to LEGO City, too. The food critic is visiting as a tourist to review the gelato shop. Of course, we added Alex as a minifigure.”
The inclusion of a minifigure Alex feels like the perfect detail to cap off the impressively accurate 21359 Italian Riviera — a set authentic to the region it represents, complete with the awestruck traveller who got the iconic region immortalised in LEGO bricks.
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