Lego and Sandcastles: How It All Started

Images created by Zachary Pulman with Midjourney

Somewhere between an old wooden box of Lego and the shifting sands of a Greek beach, my love for design took root.

As the youngest of three brothers, I grew up in a world where creativity wasn’t handed to me—it had to be discovered. My Lego set wasn’t the kind that came in pristine kits with glossy instruction booklets. Instead, it was a vast, chaotic treasure trove of hand-me-down bricks, all tipped into a battered wooden box with a red lid, the word LEGO emblazoned across it in bold white letters. There were no instructions, no right or wrong answers—just an open-ended invitation to build.

And build I did.

Some days, it was a race to see how high I could stack a structure before gravity had its say. Other times, I’d sit for hours, sorting pieces by colour, lightest to darkest, just for the satisfaction of it. At one point, I became obsessed with crafting abstract monsters—strange, geometric creatures that made perfect sense to me and no one else. The process mattered more than the outcome. There were no constraints, no expectations, just the satisfying click of one brick locking into another.

Sandcastles followed the same logic. Summers in Greece meant early morning races to the beach before the sand was disturbed, a blank canvas waiting to be shaped. Towers and walls rose quickly, only to be tested by the inevitable tide. First, I built stronger. Then, I tried to build smarter. Trenches, barriers, elaborate defence systems—each new wave forced me to adapt. Eventually, a small team of fellow beachgoers would gather, shovels in hand, either genuinely invested in the project or, more likely, looking for an excuse to chat to my mum.

Looking back, I can see the common thread. Lego taught me the beauty of modularity, of pushing boundaries, of structure and abstraction coexisting. Sandcastles taught me about resilience, adaptation, and the inevitable impermanence of even our best work.

Today, I design spaces that aren’t just built but felt—places that tell stories, invite people in, and evolve over time. It turns out, whether with bricks, sand, or architecture, the best designs are the ones that let imagination take hold.

Written by Zachary Pulman, our Creative Founder.