Behind the scenes of LEGO Ideas Italian Riviera: Designers explain major changes

The LEGO Ideas design team has explained the thought process behind most of the major changes to 21359 Italian Riviera.

It’s not unusual for LEGO Ideas sets to go through changes as they evolve from fan-designed projects to official LEGO models. We’ve already broken down some of the biggest changes that we noticed ourselves, but now we can dig into the details even more after talking to the LEGO Ideas design team who worked on the model.

LEGO designer Mary Wilson, LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan Scott, and fan designer Alex Sahli offered insights into all the major changes that went into 21359 Italian Riviera, from the updated colours to the move away from a modular building structure.

From modular base to angled sections

The first and most instantly noticeable change is the switch from a modular building-style base to the blue, watery base of the final model. The whole shape of the model has been adjusted accordingly, changing it from clean lines to more natural curves.

“The whole model is now built on two large wedges that are attached to one another to give an angle to the entire model,” explained Mary. “That was based on the suggestion from Alex to embrace those twisty small streets.”

“My original model was built on square or rectangular base plates,” added Alex. “To get the angles, I just angled the buildings using basic LEGO maths. That worked, but it was a little less stable.

“I’m glad it went in this direction. I know some people are disappointed that it’s not modular, but I like this because it looks good from all angles. It really just captures all the strange ways that the streets follow the hills.”

While the modular base may have gone, the changing shape had knock-on effects throughout the model, offering more space to the interiors.

“Changing the base allowed the rest of the buildings to become more square, which let it have multiple floors stacked on top of each other,” said Mary. “The red-orange building could split into three floors to get a few more stories in there.

“We wanted to be faithful to the Cinque Terra area,” she continued. “We angled the rocks on the side to get some of the landscape in there, and then removed the beach and added the fishing boats, because a lot of these are small fishing towns as well. It was really about trying to bring the accuracy to the model as well as balancing the aesthetics.”

Goodbye beach

While the original design had a sandy beach, that has almost entirely been removed, turning the space into a watery dock for a fishing boat. That also replaces the yellow canoe, while the sandy nature of the space has been incorporated into the bricks, with more colour variety giving a sense of the terrain.

“I had more of a beach in my original design,” said Alex. “That didn’t really make the final cut. There’s a very small suggestion of a beach, but a lot of these towns don’t have a full beach. Some of them have small, sandy beaches, but a lot of them just drop into the sea. So I think that was. We just didn’t really have enough space for it.

“Also, because a lot of the towns in these coastal regions are just rock that directly drop into the water, and so that little area between the boat and the rest of the dock is that rocky sand buildup that you’ll typically get,” added Mary. “We felt that the beach wasn’t exactly Cinque Terre.”

A new lick of paint

While two of the buildings stay pretty close to the original colours, the building on the right has changed the most, debuting the LEGO Group’s fairly new reddish orange colour for a whole building.

“I wanted to stay fairly true to the original design, but also the original render that I believe so many people fell in love with from Alex’s model,” explained Mary. “The yellow really shines, and then the white building in the back is kind of in shadow and looks almost off white. That’s why I chose the light nougat colour, because it’s probably our lightest shade other than white.

“Then for the previously coral building, we have just gotten our new reddish orange colour, and we wanted to celebrate that,” she continued. “It’s also a colour that you see a lot in the area, and it happened to contrast perfectly with the water, which is just so incredibly blue in every single image I’ve ever looked at. So in a way, it was almost spelt out for us. When you look at photos of the area, there are certain colours and it just looks so good. We were able to take that and put it directly on the model.”

“We did talk about whether we could use the coral colour for one of the buildings, because they are very bright and vibrant,” added Jordan. “But our coral is just a little too neon in a way. We tried it, and it is just in your face, drawing all of your attention to that site. I think the reddish orange is a really nice in-between that works quite well. Plus, it’s new, so that’s really cool to get more bricks in that colour for people to build with.”

A roof redesign

Alex was the first one to note that his original design had some flaws, saying: “I really liked my original roof design, but it’s fairly part-intensive and pretty unstable. I’m sure there are ways to make it better, but I don’t think it would meet the quality standards for an actual set, so I figured that it would probably be changed.”

He was right, with the LEGO Ideas team replacing his roofs with a new design, one that still aims to capture that terracotta tiling effect.

“The new roofs look really nice,” the fan designer said. “I like the half cylinder pieces. It’s nice that they have some texture variation and all the equipment on top.”

Italian details galore

For this LEGO Ideas set to live up to its name, the personality and atmosphere of the Italian Riviera needed to be felt throughout. To that end, some finer details have been sprinkled throughout to give that Cinque Terre feel – like the windows, to start off with.

“I increased the quantity of windows, and therefore window shutters, which are so iconically green in that area,” said Mary.

Another vital quintessentially Italian detail came after Alex made it to the region in person for the first time.

“All the TV antennas and satellite dishes,” laughed Alex. “It’s a small detail, but I feel that it’s really defining and important to the region. You have all these beautiful houses, and then you have these janky antennas.

“It’s kind of funny, but they also need to be there. I remember seeing them everywhere and it’s a cool reminder that this is a real place. It looks like a movie set at times, so beautiful and perfect – and then you have those.”

21359 Italian Riviera, antennas and all, will be available to buy from August 7 for LEGO Insiders and from August 10 for everyone else, retailing at £249.99 / $299.99 / €279.99. Those ordering between August 7 and 10 will also take home 5009422 Italian Market Van for no extra cost.

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