Most people have created something out of Lego blocks at some point in their life, be it something small and simple like a Lego cottage, or large and complicated like Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon. At the very least, you have probably felt the wrath of one of your kid’s stray blocks, stepping on it as you walked barefoot through the house at midnight.
Regardless, Legos are typically thought of as toys or hobbies, but Adam Reed Tucker, a former architect whose business was decimated by the poor economy, is creating architectural mirabilia out of these colorful plastic blocks worthy of their own exhibit at one of the top museums in the country.
As The Chicago Tribune reports, Tucker has an estimated 9 million Lego bricks at his Chicago-area home that he uses to build his displays. His first creation was the product of a day sitting in Barnes & Noble thinking about what he wanted to do with his life after his firm closed. He wanted to work with his hands, and remembered he was good at making models as an architecture student.
His next stop was Toys R Us, where he purchased a Hogwarts Lego set and used the provided pieces to make a replica of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. These smaller projects grew into larger ones, such as an 8-foot-tall model of One World Trade Center (with one side left exposed to show how the building was made and why it collapsed), until, eventually, he was using tens of thousands of Lego blocks on one project alone.
Currently, Tucker has 13 pieces - and 310,000 blocks - on display at the Museum of Science and Industry as part of his “Brick by Brick” exhibit. Each piece in the exhibit shares the common theme of being an architectural wonder, such as a 60-foot-long replica of the Golden Gate Bridge created from an estimated 64,500 bricks, a Roman coliseum constructed of 22,500 bricks and shown in a cutaway to expose its manner of construction, and a Hoover Dam meant to mimic its appearance in old black and white photos.
Tucker has three more exhibits planned; one that focuses on the story of the industrial revolution, one focused on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, and one that puts Walt Disney’s work on center stage.
Click here to view images from the “Brick by Brick” exhibit.
Related Stories
| Jul 21, 2014
16 utility questions to answer during your building project
We need electricity to power our building projects, along with water and gas and a faultless sanitation system. That’s what we think about when we think about utility requirements for our building project, but are we missing something? SPONSORED CONTENT
| Jul 21, 2014
Commercial real estate development growing at strongest pace since recovery began: NAIOP report
Industrial, warehousing, office, and retail sectors see strong gains; Texas leads the nation in construction-value stats.
| Jul 21, 2014
Economists ponder uneven recovery, weigh benefits of big infrastructure [2014 Giants 300 Report]
According to expert forecasters, multifamily projects, the Panama Canal expansion, and the petroleum industry’s “shale gale” could be saving graces for commercial AEC firms seeking growth opportunities in an economy that’s provided its share of recent disappointments.
| Jul 21, 2014
Workplace trends survey reveals generational patterns in office use
Data analysis from Mancini•Duffy indicates significant variations among age cohorts in the workplace.
| Jul 20, 2014
IPD contract saves time and money for cancer center [2014 Building Team Awards]
Partners share the risk and reward of extreme collaboration on this LEED Silver project, which relies heavily on Lean principles.
| Jul 20, 2014
Why every major U.S. city should be nurturing ‘Innovation Hubs’
Today, more than ever, tech districts are the key to economic growth for metro markets. A new report from the Brookings Institution calls tech hubs the superchargers of innovation economies and creators of highly coveted tech jobs.
| Jul 18, 2014
Contractors warm up to new technologies, invent new management schemes [2014 Giants 300 Report]
“UAV.” “LATISTA.” “CMST.” If BD+C Giants 300 contractors have anything to say about it, these new terms may someday be as well known as “BIM” or “LEED.” Here’s a sampling of what Giant GCs and CMs are doing by way of technological and managerial innovation.
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Construction Management Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Jacobs, Barton Malow, Hill International top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest construction management and project management firms in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Contractors [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Turner, Whiting-Turner, Skanska top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest contractors in the United States.
