The Stockholm Designer Behind @TokyoBuild Recreates Houses He’s Never Seen

Christopher Robin Nordström has never seen any of the houses he’s built. Every model made under his @TokyoBuild handle is taken from Google Street View, then reconstructed in miniature on his kitchen table in Stockholm.

The project began in 2018 as a humble hobby, and an alternative to evenings spent watching TV, but it now has over 220,000 followers on Instagram.

“It was a kind of healing process, a way of finding myself again, without sounding too spiritual,” he says.

He may have trained as a furniture designer, worked as a head of design at a bag brand and, it turns out, had a brief spell as a competitive close-up magician – but model making has now become Nordström’s full-time practice, gaining him solo shows at galleries, and collaborations with brands such as Toyota and IKEA.

We spoke to him about how he got here.

Let’s start right at the beginning. What was your route into design?

I was born and raised in Stockholm, and I still live on the southern island. I studied art in high school, then furniture design at university. I graduated in the early 2000s, which was really bad timing for design.

I ended up focusing on children’s design. I had my own brand and freelanced for other companies, IKEA among them. Almost 20 years ago, I was working there as a kids’ concept designer.

And from there you ended up in bag design, which feels like quite a jump?

I became a parent and wanted to do something different. At the time I was making an interview-based fanzine about two-wheelers, and I approached Sandqvist, the Swedish bag company, about releasing something together. They said, “Sure, but are you interested in designing bags?” That’s how it started.

How long did you end up staying?

Five or six years, first as a designer and then as head of design. I did ten seasons. When I joined I was employee number four, and by the time I left they were up to about 52. After that I freelanced for H&M as chief designer for men’s bags, then women’s, then kids’.

So where does Tokyo come into all of this?

H&M sent me on an inspiration trip there in 2018. I’d wanted to go since I was 12, but back then Japan felt like a big deal. New York was easier, so that’s where everyone ended up. When I finally went, I fell in love with the city. It’s a cliché, and I have to accept being the Western guy who falls for Tokyo. But if you’re into anime, manga or sci-fi, you end up there. Whether it’s crafts, denim or embroidery, dig deep enough and you always end up in Japan.

And when you came home, that’s when you started building miniatures?

Life felt uninspiring at that point. After the kids went to bed, I’d watch rubbish on Netflix and see my life passing by. I wanted a desktop hobby, and I’d taken photos of everything in Tokyo, so I started building.

Was model-making something you’d done before, or was it completely new?

I grew up with it. My dad has always been into model railways. My mother is from Finland, and for some reason my dad built the entire Finnish Air Force in plastic, so there were model planes everywhere. I built models as a kid, but then it became dorky and you were supposed to ride BMX instead. I drifted in and out of it.

Why Tokyo houses, though? Had you thought about building anything else?

Years earlier I’d had the idea of building Baltimore from The Wire. It could have been The Wire Builds. But after that trip, it became Tokyo.

Have you kept count of how many houses you’ve built?

Fifteen, I think. Full time, they take probably two or three months. But nobody can focus eight hours a day for three months on one house, so I always have several projects going, and in practice it’s more like half a year.

Is there any way to speed that up?

For a recent exhibition in Osaka, I built eight models of the same house from different years, so I could cut all the façades at once. But generally it’s very hard to speed up and impossible to cut corners.

Tell me how you find the houses you build.

I find every one on Google Street View. I’ve been going to Tokyo twice a year since 2018, but I’ve never visited a house I’ve built or documented one on the spot.

Never? Do you have any other rules like that?

Every new house has to include one element I haven’t done before. It can be small, like a texture, an awning, a window shape or a material, but there has to be something new to replicate each time.

Let’s get into IKEA. How did that come about?

A group of people at IKEA had been following Tokyo Build for a couple of years, apparently. They asked whether I’d be interested in a collaboration, as opposed to commissioning miniatures. Tokyo Build had barely done any of those.

I’m Swedish, and IKEA is Swedish. There isn’t a Swedish person without a relationship to IKEA, and mine is a good one. I have lots of their products at home, I like what they stand for, and I’d worked with them before.

So what were they actually asking you to make?

It was two projects in one: miniature kits, and small rooms and kitchens. I’d never done that kind of miniature production before, so it was a real challenge.

Were you involved beyond the building itself?

Quite involved. I designed the box and how its interior should look when you open it. It took me back to my design roots, so the project brought everything together.

Can you talk me through one of the pieces?

The main one was the Kallax shelf. IKEA’s initial idea was to skip the flat-pack and simply fill it with things. I couldn’t comprehend that. The whole idea of IKEA is flat-pack, and if we’re doing an unboxing, you should have to assemble it.

How do you even begin shrinking something like that?

You can’t take a product and shrink it. We had to adapt it to the scale and change how it works, because tiny Allen screws weren’t an option. We came up with a sliding mechanism that imitates the look of the original. That’s true of all miniatures. It isn’t a straight line, and sometimes parts have to be even smaller than scale to work. There’s no guide for it.

Were there other pieces that were particularly tricky?

The clock, with its face and glass. We used 3D scanning, 3D printing, casting and a lot of handwork. One person spent almost 500 hours making tiny books and wrapping record covers in plastic so they looked sleeved.

What happens when something doesn’t work first time?

Something I learned through Tokyo Build is that redoing something isn’t going backwards. It’s annoying, but if it comes out a little better, that’s progress.

I can’t pretend it’s fun all the time. Lots of tasks are tedious, even ridiculous, and you have to go in knowing that. The payoff is still worth it.

Does it ever tip into feeling meditative?

Yes. When I started in 2018, it was a kind of healing process, a way of finding myself again, without sounding too spiritual.

Instagram has been key to your success with model making, but I feel like more and more people want hobbies that have nothing to do with Instagram. How do you feel about it?

People regularly ask me for my secret to Instagram success, if we should call it that. I think it’s that I’ve never paid attention to it. When everyone said you had to post Reels, I didn’t. I don’t think I’ve posted a single one, and I’ve used the same hashtags from the start.

So why do you think people connect with it?

They enjoy seeing things being made. And I’m honest. I show when things go wrong, when I get frustrated, when it’s dead boring. People identify with that, because that’s how things actually are. I also show that you don’t need fancy machines, and when I do use one, I show it.

Is that openness something you think about?

I’ve been thinking about it lately. I competed in close-up magic when I was young, and that’s a world built on keeping secrets. With miniatures, I don’t understand why people hide their techniques. I’m not doing magic there. And, not to brag, I’ve never had a bad comment.

What would you say it’s given you?

I can easily find things about Instagram that annoy me. But the miniature community there is fantastic, and I’ve made friends for life. It’s taken me to Tokyo to eat ramen with people I’d never met and to hang out at Naito Engineering’s garage. It’s hard to resent something that opened up that world.