Recreating LEGO Icons 10312 Jazz Club in its original colours

The designer of LEGO Icons 10312 Jazz Club says the dark red segments of the 2023 modular building were originally dark blue, so here’s what that might have looked like.

Releasing January 1 for £199.99 / $229.99 / €229.99, the 2,899-piece 10312 Jazz Club includes a vibrant mix of three colours: dark red, dark azure and cool yellow. These shades of primary hues are a real departure from recent modular buildings, with 10297 Boutique Hotel and 10278 Police Station both trading primarily in neutral or pastel tones.

It didn’t always look like this, though: according to Anderson Grubb, the LEGO designer who brought 10312 Jazz Club from concept to LEGO Store shelves, all the dark red sections of the building – that is, the upper floors of the jazz club – were originally dark blue.

“We really wanted to emphasise the blues and make that visual connection to the music, but it was making the building seem very cold and people were not responding positively to it,” Grubb told Brickset. “So we switched to another dark colour, that still gave that night-time feel, but with a warmer tone.”

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That’s the kind of tantalising detail that deserves to be explored further, so we’ve whipped up a concept of 10312 Jazz Club that swaps out the dark red elements for dark blue. The result is actually pretty stunning, and while it’s easy to see where it could read as cold, it’s also much more successful at communicating that late-night vibe.

Those warm tones arguably still come through in the dark orange 1×1 tiles, too, which we’ve left in for contrast, and the dark orange walls on the ground floor, which can be seen through the club’s windows. It’s also an accurate reflection of Grubb’s description, with only the dark red bricks swapped for dark blue – the dark orange pieces are all still in place.

But we’ve also gone one step further, recolouring the other three walls of the ground floor dark blue to match the upper storeys, while leaving the dark azure street-facing wall intact. This one does read colder for sure, and makes the 1×1 tiles on the higher floors look a little more out of place, so we’re inclined to say the best option is keeping the dark orange ground floor as is.

Whether you’ll be able to swap the dark red pieces in 10312 Jazz Club for dark blue relies entirely on the availability of those elements, both in sets and on the aftermarket, and we won’t know whether it’s possible until the set launches on January 1 (and the parts list finds its way online). At least one piece – the dark blue 1×1 headlight brick holding those 1×1 tiles – hasn’t been produced in dark blue since 2005, and is in short supply on BrickLink.

See LEGO Icons 10312 Jazz Club lined up with current modular buildings
LEGO Icons 10312 Jazz Club builds the case for dropping yellow minifigures

Releasing 10312 Jazz Club in dark blue to begin with may therefore have also been a useful means of improving the availability of pieces in that colour, though it would obviously have been at the expense of the dark red version – and we’re definitely not saying that the final model suffers for using that hue instead. But at least some of the early reception to the next modular building has focused on the mix of colours, and swapping to dark blue might have allayed some of those criticisms.

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Let us know your preference (dark red or dark blue, or even another colour entirely) in the comments below. 10312 Jazz Club will be available to purchase (in dark red!) from LEGO.com and in LEGO Stores from January 1, 2023.

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Author Profile

Chris Wharfe
I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

Chris Wharfe

I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

One thought on “Recreating LEGO Icons 10312 Jazz Club in its original colours

  • 17/12/2022 at 08:22
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    for me it’s not the colors so much as the design. it feels like it lacks any architectural detail. very boxy and quite amateur looking.

    Reply

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