LEGO Architecture

taylor walters | February 15th, 2011

“Lego Architecture: Towering Ambition” is an exhibit that captures the imagination of every viewer, and places it into a context with which we are all avidly familiar. The tiny bricks that captured our hearts and minds at a young age, asking us to build and create what we desired, still seem to tug on that same string.

Over the winter break I happened upon the National Building Museum, as I winded my way throug the labyrinth of knowledge that is Washington D.C. The building that so beautifully toys with scale drew me to an incredible exhibit on toys of scale. An image of a young girl standing next to the Burj Khalifa illustrates my same feelings when I first entered the exhibit, amazement and inspiration.

Come on, who didn’t imagine constructing their own world when playing with LEGO bricks. The image of the congregation of tourists at the LEGO creation station illustrates this idea perfectly. Kids and their parents are so filled with inspiration that they want to sit down and create at that very moment, building their house or constructing their own skyscraper. I only wish I could have been able to partake and create my own LEGO structure without appearing as a lone male playing around everyone else’s children; but I digress.

Bjarke Ingels Group, a firm scheduled to speak in the Reinsch-Pierce Auditorium later this semester has used LEGO as a way for building models. The group most recently used the plastic bricks to construct the LEGO Towers project. A time-lapse video of the construction process can be found on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkNfC95wASo

The idea that most struck me about the exhibit is, without the fervor surrounding it; I might have bypassed it altogether. It was located in a room the size of the CFY studio in a corner of the building, and there were maybe twenty buildings constructed in the exhibit. But, the excitement of a building created out of LEGO was enough to grasp my attention and separate me from five dollars needed to see the exhibit. Adam Reed Tucker, the designer and creator of the exhibit, even managed to beat Chicago and Calatrava to the punch of finishing the Chicago Spire.

To see a building constructed out of LEGO is a nostalgic event, we have all built our own LEGO houses and cities. We have spent hours scouring the bucket to find the right brick, and we can appreciate the time it takes to build a LEGO model. In this sense, I believe a LEGO model is better than another medium of model. With it you can relate about the time spent layering the mini-bricks with far more people than architecture students. LEGO seems to have an intrinsic quality of enjoyment that grabs on and doesn’t let go.