She's on a Piece Mission

LEGO^® bricks may be just toys for some, but Ms Xylvie Wong has turned her passion for them into her career — and a successful one at that. Her life-sized creation of a HDB void deck scene, complete with the uniquely Singaporean, old-school stone table and a bird cage hanging from the ceiling, made entirely of LEGO^® bricks received so much attention that she was invited to display it in the United States. “I did that project for fun, just because I wanted to,” the 35 year-old says. “It was surprising and rewarding to be able to exhibit my work overseas.”

More recently, she and two friends created miniature replicas of local monuments for the “Building History: Monuments In Bricks And Blocks” exhibition, initiated by the National Heritage Board. These included the Central Fire Station, former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, Sultan Mosque and St Andrew’s Cathedral, which is their tallest model, standing at 1.1m high. The travelling exhibition debuted at the Central Public Library in June 2018, before it was showcased at other libraries across Singapore. Says Ms Wong, “It showed people that you need not work with LEGO^® bricks solely based on the instruction manual. You can be as creative as you want!”

Ms Wong has been a big LEGO^® fan ever since receiving her first set of the bricks from her father at age two. But work is not all fun and games. In fact, the monument assignment required the trio to fly drones over the various buildings for a complete aerial view of the structures before they could proceed. The project took seven months to complete. Luckily, a hectic student life at NUS had equipped Ms Wong with time management skills and the ability to work under pressure. The effort, however, was worth the while and one that made perfect sense to the mother of an 8 year-old son. She says matter-of-factly, “I have this need to just create, and so I do.”  

Text by Fairoza Mansor. Photos courtesy of Ms Xylvie Wong.