With the help of two local community college students, James Potter and Andrew Myers, Yurkiw spent the summer designing and building a “one-room schoolhouse for the 21st century.”

W hen Mark Yurkiw—a physicist, artist, designer, and Connecticut resident — learned through the Make-A-Wish Foundation that a 10-year-old boy upstate wanted a place where he could go to build with Lego blocks and play Minecraft, Yurkiw knew just who to call and what to build.

A custom prefab kit assembly, the 100-square-foot Think3DLab structure was designed to be modular, scalable, and easily transported and assembled on-site in one day. It includes space for Lego building, tables for drawing, magnetic walls, a bed, and LED lights and a solar fan to keep the space bright and cool.

Without the base, the building weighs approximately 600 pounds. The outside walls are colorful acrylic cut into brick shapes. According to Yurkiw, “The Legos can be built directly onto the walls themselves. We added a beautiful 3D printer, and a 3D pen so kids can draw in midair. We are at the cusp of the digital age that is transforming the world, and this is the new foreign language that needs to be offered to children. I want kids to be able to start exploring the new world upon us.”