Yinka Ilori Transformed a Laundromat Into a Colorful Kid’s Playground

LEGO Teams Up With an Artist To Transform an East London Laundromat Into a Colorful Kid’s Playground

By Arnesia Young on February 7, 2022

LEGO + Yinka Ilori, Laundrette of Dreams

Photo: © Mark Cocksedge
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London-based artist and designer Yinka Ilori proves that with a little imagination, there’s no limit to what you can build with LEGOs. This is all too clear with his colorful installation, titled Launderette of Dreams. Created in collaboration with The LEGO Group as part of its Rebuild the World campaign to celebrate children’s creativity, the project transforms a local East London laundromat into a vibrant, interactive playground bursting with color. Ilori collaborated with children from his former primary school to develop the interior’s playful design, asking them how they would rebuild the space to improve it and bring people from their community together. The resulting polychromic dreamscape is any child’s (or inner child’s) fantasy.

Now, with its kaleidoscope laundry drums, LEGO mural walls, and geometric hopscotch floors, the laundromat’s once dull and unremarkable layout is completely unrecognizable. The concept of the interactive installation draws from Ilori’s own childhood memories of visiting his local laundromat with his family when he was young. It was during that tedious drudgery that the artist first recalls embracing his own imagination and creativity to make even the most monotonous day-to-day routines more playful and fun.

“The Launderette of Dreams is a very personal project for me because I spent a lot of time during my childhood at the launderette,” says Ilori. “It was where I could dream about the things I wanted to achieve. We often forget about the mundane spaces which play an important role in bringing the community and people from different cultures and backgrounds together, as well as providing an opportunity for kids to meet, play and share ideas.”

According to recent research from the LEGO Group, 85% of kids say they have fun ideas for solving problems we face today in order to change their world for the better. Over half (58%) of them say that they love coming up with ideas to make the world a much more fun and less boring place to be. The Launderette of Dreams invites people, especially children, to come together, play, and rebuild the world they envision using LEGO bricks. The project serves to highlight how playing with LEGOs can help children develop skills that will benefit them throughout their lives, like creative problem solving, resilience, and communication.

“I hope the Launderette of Dreams inspires both adults and children to believe they can dream and create anywhere,” Ilori continues. “LEGO bricks are a powerful tool to help bring this imagination to life by offering the creative freedom to build any structure or object that you can dream of.”

Scroll down to see images of Yinka Ilori’s incredible interactive installation, Launderette of Dreams.