Lego launches Dots 2D pattern design range with eye-popping Camille Walala installation

Pattern maestro Camille Walala has created a visual feast in London’s Coal Drops Yard to launch Lego’s new 2D tile product, Dots. The range is an altogether different direction for Lego, not centred around building structures but instead designing 2D canvases. Hence their collaboration with Walala, who lends her loud motifs to the installation to explore its visual potential.

The Dots range comes in the form of square tiles with Lego studs, to which users can add flat bricks in different geometric shapes and colours, building compositions and patterns.

Walala’s installation draws from the colours and shapes of the range, adorning eight shipping containers over two storeys with a mixture of Lego Dots and her distinctive pattern designs, covering the walls, floors, furniture and furnishings. It takes the form of a home (with a twist), with five rooms: a living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and… disco – complete with custom playlist by Ele Beattie and neon-patterned mirrored walls. Also, there’s a slide, after all it is an installation for kids (big and small).

Visitors can play with the Lego Dots range themselves, designing patterns and bracelets, and take away elements, even though the range won’t be able to buy until March. The range itself also features wearables – such as the bracelets – and room decor products, including frames and pencil holders, wherein the owner can customise the surface design. So-called “mood tiles” also form part of the range, providing inspiration to budding designers with designs including facial expressions, a musical note, planets, a starry sky and paw prints.

Dots launches off the back of Lego’s in-depth research into the play behaviour of 6-12 year olds, that apparently shows kids are increasingly looking to personalise their belongings and what they play with, and express themselves through their own designs. The company conducted a quantitative study with 10,800 parents and 7,200 children across the US, China and Germany, and among the participants a total of 21,600 play observations were mapped out and used to identify the relevance and concept direction of Dots. This was followed by monthly play sessions, focus groups and testing across the US, UK, Germany and Denmark, with over 500 parents and kids over two years.

On the installation project, Walala says it is one of the most challenging her studio has ever worked on. “It was a huge and ambitious project to deliver in a very tight time frame – and unlike anything we’ve done before. Something like House of Dots would normally take us a year; in this case, we had about three months. I loved having the freedom to play, to let my imagination run free and create a house of fantasies.”

Walala is no stranger to large-scale manifestations of her work, having turned a Mayfair street into an open-air living room for LDF last year, and a billboard poster campaign for Youth Homelessness. Having become widely known for her African print and Memphis-inspired graphical kaleidoscopes, the French, London-based designer’s stratospheric career has seen Walala apply her patterns to everything from tea towels to building facades.

House of Dots is open at Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross, London until 2 February.