Children use Lego to build the future Melbourne

Malcolm Smith’s mother knew he was going to be an architect because he was always building things with Lego.
Since then, he has been involved in the design of urban neighborhoods around the world, including London, Singapore, Amsterdam and Shanghai.
This weekend, he’s leading a mass Lego project at Melbourne’s NGV, where kids can imagine and build their own cities of the future.
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“The city of the future is good when it’s inclusive…kids are incredibly powerful, insightful in the beauty of their naivety, to give us different ideas,” he told AAP.
Entrants will be given a design challenge and try to come up with a solution, with their works to be displayed to the public.
Five-year-old Sophie has been busy combining town planning with her love for animals.
“I love playing in the city. The best part is arriving by train. My favorite place to visit is the zoo”
“I built a garden in town for the animals to play”
The two-day event for children under 12 in the Great Hall of the Gallery will not only be fun for Lego lovers, it will be used as a source of ideas to revitalize the city’s CBD for children. families and children.
Mr Smith, a cities leader with global design firm Arup, previously worked on Urban 95, a program that asks what a city looks like when lived 95cm above the ground – the height of a child from three years in good health.
He found that they should be created with family essentials nearby, have safe places to walk and good public transport, and keep the needs of babies and caregivers in mind.
When cities work well for kids, they tend to work for everyone, Smith says.
“When we do these kinds of exercises, it reminds us of what the outcomes of the cities we design every day of our work should be like,” he said.
After 20 years of working abroad, he noticed that Melbourne had become greener and more accessible, and that the city had a new relationship with the Yarra River.
“Children Build Future Cities” is part of Melbourne Design Week.