CONCEPTUAL CHANGES

It’s a rare opportunity to discover the origins of an official set, so when LEGO® Friends designer António Ricardo Silva shared the story of how he developed a giant aeroplane concept, Bricks came along for the ride

Words: Lewis Matthews Photography: Andrew Tipping W hen asked to design a big set, just how big do you go? This was the question facing António Ricardo Silva back in 2013, when he was asked to start working on an airport for the world of LEGO® Friends. By this stage, the theme was developing nicely and so there was now room for the team to push the boundaries a little further.

Ricardo recalls it was the end of the design year (June/July) and his manager had asked him to investigate making a plane for the range, but he wanted it big. The brief was to find something new, using the existing LEGO City plane as a starting point. With his manager away on holiday, the Portuguese designer was left alone to develop his ideas.

With this brief in mind, he first called upon one of the LEGO element designers and asked him to “pick up some of the elements used for LEGO City and just expand them”, explains Ricardo. “The result was we made them a lot wider and longer so that I could sketch up and concept a little bit around it. The designer looked at me as if to say ‘are you sure you want to do this, because it’s going to be really big and the pieces are already big’. I just thought to myself, ‘let’s give it a try’.”

As we sit across the table staring at this super-sized initial concept, he explains that they wanted to see what more could be achieved within the LEGO Friends price point. So his manager had asked him to go big, but did they know how big? And where to start?

“I started visualising from the front of the plane and found myself instantly thinking that this is going to be really huge. However, it was here that we set the scale on the prototype. We didn’t fully realise in the beginning just how big; we just thought we’d try it with these new wider elements.” Using the prototype elements and designing from the front backwards, it started to take shape. The

initial focus was on the space that had been created within the plane for extra details; for example, the cockpit allowed for two spacious seats for the pilots.

This was primarily down to the concept elements being designed four studs wider than the existing six of the LEGO City plane elements, allowing the interior to be ten studs wide. The reason for this size increase, explains Ricardo, was to allow for extra internal details to be added and to increase the number of play functions. With this extra space, he could explore lots of different options and consequently, further ideas began to pop up. For example, the front instantly became a luxury lounge setting that had two rows of reclining seats and allowed a walkway to a bar and a bathroom that even had a hot tub.

This may seem incredibly decadent but the thinking behind it was entirely logical; this was to be a high price point in the range and Ricardo wanted to ensure it had a lot of what he describes as “play starters” in it. This means that while it should resemble the transportation vehicle that it represents, in true LEGO Friends style, he wanted to ensure there was capacity for the girls to create stories. The inclusion of a bathroom, food, drinks and relaxation areas meant that they could interact more and create role-play scenarios; almost a ‘house with wings’ if you like. He thinks this concept could be described as a “dream plane”.

At this point the concept was coming together nicely; the front third of the fuselage was designed and in Ricardo’s words, it was “time to think about the wings”. He recalls; “This is when we stopped, because we realised it was going to be so huge that if we got the scale right, it was going to be too crazy. We concluded we would need a new wing element and its span would have been excessive”. To put this into context, this front third was a foot long at least, so the entire plane was going to come in over a metre in length. Therefore, before venturing any further, he decided to wait

“ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS BECAUSE IT’S GOING TO BE REALLY BIG”

The prototype fuselage was huge and would have resulted in a metre-long plane

The eventual retail set with smaller plane and an airport

The prototype is the kind of aeroplane we’d like to travel on... but never do Ricardo got almost all of these concepts into the final interior upon his manager’s return for feedback. “I showed the closed plane and they thought we couldn’t continue to develop it because it’s such a large proportion already. I said ‘I agree of course, but would you like to look inside?’ When they opened it, they were surprised and said it looks amazing.”

Ricardo was happy at this response but little did he realise that his excellent work was going to deliver a twist. Ricardo’s manager was so impressed by ideas, the brief became to fit all this great design into a plane the same scale as LEGO City. So on the one hand his work had ensured there was going to be a LEGO Friends airport set but on the other, he had made the brief harder. “This was a real challenge to try to use the old parts of the LEGO City plane and fit all of the new features inside,” he explains.

We asked if there was ever the temptation to go further with the larger model? He smiles and admits; “There was a time we thought that this could be possible but we would have to reduce the realism. LEGO Friends is based on reality with a slight twist on it. We considered whether we could cheat a bit and perhaps not have the wings, so the set could be a big hull and then you open it like you’re playing in the doll’s house. That could be a way around it but we thought that it was a bit off, as we wouldn’t have anything around it to play with and it wouldn’t deliver the ‘swoosh’ effect. It would just be standing like a doll’s house and you play with the inside but that’s not what we wanted, so we moved onto creating the scaled-down version.”

From these thoughts and discussions came the development of set 41109 Heartlake City Airport, released in 2015. Taking his design ideas and concepts, Ricardo now built these into the plane we can now see in the final set. Comparing the two planes’ internals, we can see he managed to include most in the final version. As he points out; “You can see I have managed to include two

Thanks to The LEGO Group for supplying the set to review. None of the opinions expressed in this review are those of The LEGO Group.

seats for the pilots, three luxury reclining chairs in a row, the trolley and a little bathroom with red and green lights. “There’s even a little kitchen, complete with a working coffee machine. In the back there is also a fridge and a seat for the flight attendant plus an additional luggage compartment.” In fact, the only item Ricardo had to omit was the hot tub, an impressive achievement when you consider the change in size. And we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that set 41109 is still a huge LEGO Friends offering: the plane itself is over 50 centimetres in length, so fans were in no way disappointed. The finished product also comes with an airport lounge façade to give “a taste” of the airport and prvide more playability. Inside there is a gift shop, luggage conveyor belt and ticket-checking desk. There are even some secret ‘Easter eggs’ that some designers like to put in. First up is the flight destination sticker that lists all the airports; these were specifically chosen to represent the nationalities of the design team at Billund, with Porto included for Ricardo. The postcard tile in the shop depicts a hooped lighthouse, a little nod to set 41094 Heartlake Lighthouse, and on the in-flight TV screen is a pink and white hot air balloon, hinting at set 41097 Heartlake Hot Air Balloon.

Despite the airport set being over a year old now, it is still one of our favourite LEGO Friends sets and so to hear from the designer how it all came about was an amazing journey.

Prototype (above and below) features incorporated in the retail set (top three) DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT

António Ricardo Silva has been working with the LEGO® Group since 2012 and has worked on 19 different released models in that time. His latest offerings are within the LEGO Friends amusement park range; it was his design nous that brought us the concept of a rollercoaster and the bumper cars. He explains how this was a very exciting concept for the LEGO Friends theme, as it felt so different and allowed the range to expand the existing ‘build age’ demographic a little. “We realised that if we built the amusement park, then it would have a lot of functions and when you add functions, you add technical elements, so it’s going to be a bit more for grown-ups. So you can see that it is 7+. We realised that this was the moment we had to do this and we were testing it quite regularly and found kids were amazed by it because you had things moving, and that was the trick; they really wanted to see what it does if they did this or that. So when we nailed that we thought, let’s try to find a place where we can expand it, have the rollercoaster and have other things going on, so we created more models. The ones we released are those that tested the best.” When asked about his favourite projects to date, he replies; “The amusement park is something I’m particularly proud of because of all the things happening in the models. However I will always have in my heart the lighthouse. I love that one - it was one of my first and in my heart, is beautiful. You can put it in a shelf and it looks good.”

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