Towers of Tomorrow with LEGO® Bricks: Just what can a little plastic block do?
Image courtesy of Flying Fish Exhibits.
By Kate Mazade
The Towers of Tomorrow with LEGO® Bricks exhibition inspires the next generation of architects with soaring structures constructed from small-scale blocks. Catered toward children, the exhibit breaks down the wonders of the built environment to a piece that fits in a small, sticky hand.
Originally opened at the Museum of Sydney in 2015, the exhibition has traveled to 14 cities throughout Australia and North America. The Australian-born towers have made their way to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science—a textural 2012 Morphosis design in Dallas, Texas—with the help of Highlight Capital Philanthropies, City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture, Sydney Living Museums, and Flying Fish Exhibits. Towers of Tomorrow is on display until April 24, 2022. It will then move to Sioux City, Iowa from May 2, 2022 to August 9, 2022.
The 20 LEGO® skyscrapers were constructed by Ryan McNaught, one of only 21 certified LEGO® professionals in the world. Modeled at 1:200 scale with over 500,000 bricks, the architectural marvels range in form and location. The exhibit reflects the once-tallest towers from Shreve, Lamb & Harmon's Empire State Building in New York to SOM's Burj Khalifa in Dubai, as well as sculptural icons from C.Y. Lee and Partners' Taipei 100 in Taiwan to Safdie Architects' Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
Petronas Twin Towers. Image courtesy of Flying Fish Exhibits.
In sharp white text on black walls, the structures are curbed by quotes from notable architects, encouraging visitors to dream bigger than their building blocks. In an introductory mini-documentary, McNaught explains his construction process and the toy-scaled innovation of highlighting the textures and shades of each form.
Each of the towers is accompanied by a placard with side-by-side metrics of the realized building and the LEGO® model—building height, location, date completed, and architect compared with the model's height, hours under construction and number of LEGO® bricks. Sturdy yet delicate and layered yet simplified, the towers are a testament to constructing something really big out of something really small.
Barangaroo Hotel Resort model. Image courtesy of Flying Fish Exhibits.
Some of the towers stretch up from platforms on the floor, forcing visitors—most of them shorter than 4 feet—to tip their heads back to capture the full height. Other structures sit atop curved tables that hold thousands of little plastic toys for visitors to build their own skyscrapers. Danish simplicity meets Willy Wonka-esque creativity on the little round Alvar Aalto stools where kids from three to ninety-three can dream of a world that soars beyond imagination.
Image courtesy of Flying Fish Exhibits.
Despite the danger of toppling an eleven foot model, the desire to shove a little green brick up one's nose, and the cesspool of germs in the colorful buckets of LEGO® bricks, the exhibit is a wonder to behold. It inspires the next generation to see the innovation, intricacy, patience of skyscrapers—to observe the monumentality and yet achievability of architecture.
Image courtesy of Flying Fish Exhibits.
A pile of building blocks snapped together can remind us all of the days when we pointed up and squinted at the height enlightened by innovation. Even if we now practice a more human-scale architecture, we were all once the kid with a bucket of LEGO® bricks wondering just how tall it can go.
Tickets are available on the Perot Museum's website.