Working with XD Agency, we built the LEGO® Friends Unicorn Dream Café for a three-market run through the Midwest. An SS40 opened along its full length to hold the café and the play space, and a set of sculpted arches, benches and brick walls turned the plaza around it into Heartlake City. It opened in Chicago on August 21, 2026.
The LEGO Friends Unicorn Dream Café activation
One giant unicorn. Two days of kids leaning on it.
The arches were the hard part. LEGO geometry is straight edges, and the entry had to read as a curve from across the plaza, then take two days of kids leaning on it without showing it. Every piece was engineered before anything was cut, six brand colours were matched precisely, and the bases were built to sit level on three different plazas.
Everything else was built to shape the visit. Brick-pattern walls and printed landscape windows inside the unit, a juice bar and brick benches for the café, a half wall and figure bases to draw the courtyard and hold the queue. The activation was free and faced the sidewalk, so anyone walking past could come in, which is how local media picked it up before opening weekend. Then it packed down, crossed to the next market and went back up.
- SS40 unit opened along its full length, wrapped and fitted out as the café and play space
- Two sculpted entrance arches, with the Unicorn Arch carrying the entry
- Six LEGO brand colours matched precisely across every painted surface
- Brick-pattern walls, printed Heartlake City windows, juice bar, brick benches and figure bases
- Engineering, 3D printing and custom sculptural fabrication in house, with technical plans and certifications for public use
- Packed, shipped and rebuilt on a three-market tour, two days each: Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis
