Rietveld LEGO Buffet by Minale-Maeda

Studio Minale-Maeda
Rietveld LEGO Buffet, 2010

Meet Buffet — a grown-up piece of furniture that refuses to let go of its inner child. Dreamed up by Minale-Maeda, it’s a cheeky remix of Rietveld’s 20th-century buffet, except this time it’s built from a jaw-dropping 26,000 LEGO bricks. Yes, the same colourful click-clack bricks you once used to build castles.

It’s also a sequel of sorts: the buffet continues Mario Minale’s 2004 LEGO makeover of Rietveld’s famous Red Blue Chair, proving that once you start reimagining modernist icons in toy form, it’s hard to stop.

Somehow, this buffet breaks free from both its famous parents: Rietveld and the LEGO brick itself. It’s not just a tribute; it’s an entirely new creature grown-up enough to serve dinner from, yet still winking at its playful origins. And by turning a mass-produced toy into real-deal furniture, Minale-Maeda make industrial standardisation feel less like cold efficiency and more like a human handshake… made of plastic.