How Building With LEGO® Bricks Mirrors Harry Nuriev’s Design Vision

Inside a monochrome space designed by Crosby Studios, artist and architect Harry Nuriev sits cross-legged on the floor, carefully assembling the new LEGO® Star Wars™ Death Star™. The scene is part meditation, part manifesto for an architect at work not just constructing a model, but unpacking what it means to build something lasting.

“When I used to be a kid, I remember myself spending hours assembling a LEGO set,” he says. “There is a beautiful feeling of creative freedom that I can do anything I want.” In this moment, play and purpose brings reminder that creativity begins long before blueprints and deadlines.

Nuriev’s world has always been shaped by transformation. As the founder of Crosby Studios, he’s known for blending art, architecture, fashion and design into a single visual language. It’s one that feels futuristic yet deeply personal. It’s fitting, then, that the LEGO Star Wars Death Star mirrors his own aesthetic: modular, sculptural and charged with nostalgia. “The LEGO Star Wars Death Star has a complete parallel with my world,” he reflects. “I’ve been building my style for 11 years, and now I found the word that described my work. I call it transformism.” That word — a fusion of transformation and realism — captures both his philosophy and the spirit of LEGO itself: the idea that structure and imagination aren’t opposites, but co-conspirators.

To Nuriev, LEGO bricks are both a toy and a design object. The Death Star set’s intricate geometry, mirrored surfaces and clean engineering read like architectural poetry, a miniature building that demands both discipline and wonder. “Sometimes I didn’t even follow the instructions,” he admits. “I just did it my own way.” That instinct, signaling rebellion and curiosity, still guides his process. In the same way that architects reinterpret form and function, Nuriev approaches LEGO as a canvas for reinterpretation. It’s a place where creative structure meets playful imperfection.

The intersection of playfulness and professional design is where Nuriev thrives. In the video, he appears almost as a hologram — a nod to both the Star Wars galaxy and the duality of past and future. “Ironically, now when I’m older and I’m building this piece, I feel so many parallels,” he says. “Because it’s all about the future, but there’s so many elements from the past as well.” His reflection turns the build into something bigger: a metaphor for the cyclical nature of creativity, where each project is a reconstruction of experience and memory. LEGO, much like design, becomes a way of processing time. It’s the tactile act of piecing the future together from fragments of nostalgia.

When the final LEGO Star Wars Death Star set takes form, one can see that it’s not just a model, but a work of art integrated into modern space. Displayed within Crosby Studios’ grayscale interior — all steel tones, soft light and precise symmetry — the LEGO build feels right at home. It becomes an object that carries both childhood wonder and adult mastery. For Nuriev, this moment closes a loop between fantasy and design, between the boy who built freely and the architect who still chases that same sense of freedom through structure.

As he places the completed Death Star set on the table, Nuriev reflects on the quiet satisfaction of creation, “It’s almost a reminder of transformation between history and future,” he says softly. In that reflection lies the heart of his craft: every build, whether a LEGO set or a real-world space, is a dialogue between who we were and who we’re becoming. And like the LEGO Star Wars Death Star set itself — meticulously assembled, perfectly imperfect — it’s proof that building something meaningful always starts with play.

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