Casa Santa & the future of ‘Legolandia Santipolo’

Yearly, it is almost a tradition for us to visit Edna del Rosario’s Jardin de Miramar in the rolling hills of Antipolo to pay tribute to Casa Santa with its over 3,005 santas. Is Casa Santa getting crowded? This was one of the questions in our mind when told there were new occupants in the famous house of Santa that has brought hundreds of kids to visit, not only during Christmas but throughout the year.

Who are these new boarders? Lego housemates, we are told. We go to our TV set and enter the world of Lego Club TV and go out of our mind. We watch on YouTube the stories of Indiana Jones Temple of Doom, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Captain America with Lego heroes and villains.

At Casa Santa, we enter a different world, all in keeping with the world of Santa. In Santa’s Bedroom, on the wall facing his bed, is the start-up collection of small to medium sized Lego characters. Edna explains that she needs to introduce something new yearly to keep the guests and children coming. This year, it is Lego Christmas and the Barbie Doll collection. At the Lego Christmas room, 50 kids are allowed to enter per batch, staying from 15 to 30 minutes. Boys favor the action figures, while girls go for the houses. The most popular is Star Wars based on sales, says Edna. We found girls crowding the Barbies in Santa costumes with Santa hats.

In our mind’s eye, we see “Legolandia Santipolo” (our own label) growing beyond the confines of Casa Santa. From the behaviors of kids Mark Pura, Fiona Tolete, Mae-Ann and Edwin Darus that morning, they could have stayed all day forgetting lunch, forgetting mama and papa existed.

Inside Casa Santa is also a room of miniature Christmas Villages installed in 2010, and outside the restored Noah’s Ark from an authentic 50-year-old wooden fishing boat turned into a playground for children. 

The History of Lego started almost 100 years ago in the workshop of a carpenter from Denmark, who made wooden toys in 1932 calling them “Lego” from the Danish leg godt meaning “play well.” His shop expanded to plastic toys and in 1949, Lego introduced the now famous interlocking “Automatic Binding Bricks” that locked together by means of several round studs on top and a hollow rectangular bottom.

Since the ’60s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes and soon enough, licensed themes from cartoon and film franchises that include Avatar: The Last Airbender,  Spider-Man, Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones.

In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission in California brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts build models and see how they react in microgravity, as part of the Lego Bricks in Space program. The results will be shared with schools as part of an educational project. Space Shuttle Endeavour is one of four orbiters Nasa had offered for museum donation after being withdrawn from service.

Lego has now bridged play to enter education and historical significance. Anyone visiting the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. would be amazed at the approximately 15,500,000 bricks used to construct the museum’s historic home. Architect Adam Reed Tucker rekindled his childhood interest in Lego bricks to achieve this.

The museum of “architecture, design, engineering, construction and urban planning” was created by an act of Congress in 1980 and is a private non-profit institution. Exhibitions include Lego Architecture: Towering Ambition, which shows 15 iconic buildings including the Empire State Building, St. Louis’ Gateway Arch and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater made entirely from Lego bricks. Youth education programs at the museum introduce kids and teachers to design education as a hands-on way of enhancing math, science and art skills simultaneously.

We have been in the company of kids asked what their ambition in life is. Many have answered, “To live in Lego Land.”

If grown icons like Architect Tucker cannot shake off the Lego tradition from his bones, how much more the children? Our prediction: “Legolandia Santipolo” will grow by leaps and bounds in a building of its own with kids bringing in their own creations as part of a permanent exhibition.

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(Correction please: There was a missing “h” in the head of last Wednesday’s Live Feed, which should have read Chris Botti.)