The National Building Museum often showcases the grand designs of real-world architects and engineers, but every once in a while, it’s important to examine the fundamental building blocks of our childhood imagination.
This Saturday, the D.C. museum launches an exciting two-year LEGO exhibit fittingly called “Brick City.”
“It’s 300 square feet of LEGO brick extravaganza,” Exhibitions Developer Caitlin Bristol told WTOP. “We always want to inspire curiosity and wonder about the world that we design and build. What better way to do that than with LEGO bricks? They’re a wonderful, multi-generational medium that people have a chance to explore their creativity with design, construction, even a little engineering. All those things come together in this exhibition.”
Visitors will take a world tour across all seven continents, including lively streetscapes from Cartagena, Colombia; Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans; intricate temples from India to Mexico; and imaginative castles from medieval Japan to modern Las Vegas.
“It’s basically your ultimate around-the-world trip in LEGO models,” LEGO Artist Warren Elsmore told WTOP. “We go right ’round every continent in the world and look at different styles of building and architecture, iconic things you could see if you spent years working your way around the world.”
Landmarks include the Empire State Building, the Roman Colosseum, the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the 2012 Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. The magnificent centerpiece is London’s St. Pancras Station, measuring 12-feet-long and 6-feet-wide, built from over 180,000 LEGO bricks, which were shipped here from the UK.
“They really did come in a shipping container,” Elsmore said. “We loaded it back in Edinburgh where we’re based, shipped them over, then I’ve been here the last week helping the museum get set up and ready for our visitors … I will admit that we don’t count every single brick, but we’re definitely over a quarter million bricks in the exhibit.”
Born in the UK, Elsmore has been obsessed with LEGOs ever since he can remember.
“I don’t remember my first LEGO bricks, I have asked my parents, they don’t remember either, they just remember that there were always LEGO bricks around,” Elsmore said. “For me, it was always LEGOs, I never had the DUPLO bricks, the larger ones. Every Christmas, every birthday, all I ever asked for in the first 18 years or so was LEGOs. I did take a break when I was 18 to 22, but otherwise the last 40-odd years LEGO has always been a part of my life.”
After you’ve seen Elsmore’s creations, you can design your own LEGO buildings with interactive activities.
“There’s a room at the end of this gallery where you can try your hand at building some structures of your own,” Bristol said. “We have large map tables that are a map of D.C., so we can inspire some budding engineers and architects to add to the D.C. landscape with LEGO models … one of the prompts is to build a new monument for D.C., one is to build a bridge … we also have a ‘graffiti wall’ where you can use LEGOs as pixelated canvas images.”
Tickets cost $10 for adults, $7 for youth, students and seniors or free for museum members.
Expect timed entry to control crowd sizes.
Listen to our full conversation here.
