One familiar way of dismissing contemporary architecture is to say that this or that new building ‘looks like Lego’. Lego’s famous interlocking plastic bricks first went on sale in 1949 just as Modernist architecture, derived from the Bauhaus, went truly global and four-square, Cubist-like buildings lined city streets from Sydney to San Francisco. Here, nearly 70 years on, is Lego’s own feeling on the subject, the Lego House visitor centre in the Danish company’s hometown that really does look as if it is made of giant blocks of Lego. And, why not? After all, the Legoland theme park is virtually next door, while Danish architect Bjarke Ingels’ firm BIG has made its name with bold, highly expressive buildings that, rarely less than controversial, make perfect sense in the context of a brightly coloured Lego visitor centre that can be clambered over and explored in artful, knowing and playful fashion.

Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakech by Studio Ko

A homage to fashion (Credit: Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech)

Every year, from his first visit in 1966, the feted French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent spent time in Marrakech where he created his latest couture collections. Now, a museum devoted to his work and designed by Olivier Marty and Karl Fournier’s Studio Ko — which has a wealth of experience designing finely-crafted, minimalist Moroccan homes — has opened in the city. Its interlaced terracotta brick façade is designed to represent fabric, wool or tweed maybe, while the creamy smooth walls of the entrance lobby is silk-like. It is as if visitors are stepping into, or perhaps putting on, a bespoke building much, as they might an Yves Saint Laurent outfit. The conceit works, because throughout this complex of venues – galleries, auditorium, café, library and bookshop – the museum is a homage to architecture’s equivalent of clothing fabrics: laurel, oak, stained glass, glazed bricks, lacquered surfaces, marble and pearlescent tiles.