A whopping eight months in the making, Playwell Bricks is pleased to present this custom 600 Fifth Street NW set. This landmark building is currently under construction (ready for 2025) in Washington, D.C., for the Rockefeller Group and Stonebridge. Marketing agency Mosaic North America sent the team at Playwell Bricks digital renders and schematics to begin this design while the building was still in construction.

“It’s a multi-use building,” explains Playwell Bricks CEO Jason Pyett, who designed the custom set. “There’s a park and the bottom level is all commercial, then there are office buildings above that and then residential above that. It’s a pretty cool mixed-use space.”

“At eight months, this was probably our longest development time for a set of this scale, but it was simply because there were so many stakeholders involved, and so many people who had a fingerprint, so to speak, on the project. It can take a long time to get to what everyone wants.”

He points out that the final set is nothing like the original one he designed. Colors were changed, structures were changed, and “I started out trying to be super complex and create the exact building, while the clients preferred simplicity.” This is something of a habit with Jason, but he’s happy to admit it. “I had to eat a lot of humble pie.”

He explains that in the building itself, “there are a lot of different architectural elements.” But to represent them all, “the design would have been about three times the size of the one we did. This was going out to CEOs and board members of the Rockefeller group, so it had to be simple.”

Originally, Playwell Bricks was creating 100 sets of 600 Fifth Street, but once the final renders were delivered, the order was increased to 250. Jason is delighted to share that when Mosaic’s creative director passed on the design in its final state, they received no complaints or criticisms, which “never happens.”

Production times were extended on this project, which also rarely happens. “All of those windows are 1x1 bricks, and they go all around the building. There’s more than 300 of those per set, and when you multiply that by 250 sets, the numbers get pretty big.” Jason holds up his hands. “There just weren’t enough in the world. The client specifically wanted to use genuine LEGO® bricks, so we had to wait for the LEGO® group to produce enough of those 1x1 bricks to before we could move to the next step.

“Eight months is a long time of working back and forth to get to the final point, but our perseverance finally paid off. Going through all the changes and iterations that were requested, even the minor changes, all paid off in the end because they were just so incredibly happy with the model.”

Do you have a project nearing completion that you’d like to celebrate with a custom set for your stakeholders and board members? Contact Playwell Bricks today and let’s get started!