There are so many amazing things you can do with LEGOs besides watching the faces people make when they step on them with bare feet.
LEGO-certified professional Ryan McNaught and his team, who are based in Sydney, took 500,000 LEGO bricks of various shapes, size and colors to build towering models of 20 of the world's tallest and most recognizable skyscrapers. These are now on display in a new exhibition called Towers of Tomorrow with LEGO Bricks at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas.
"We're always looking for innovative, fun exhibits to bring to the museum," says Jessica Chavez, the museum's chief learning office. "We wanted to offer an awe inspiring experience."
The building models took over 2,000 combined hours to complete and re-create each skyscraper's aesthetic details and engineered structure. All of the buildings are made from standard LEGO pieces that anyone can buy.
"The ultimate compliment for me is when they ask, 'Is this made out of LEGO?'" McNaught says in a video that greets visitors at the start of the exhibition.
The collection includes buildings all over the globe such as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Chrysler and Empire State buildings in New York, the International Commerce Tower in Hong Kong, and the Infinity Tower in Brisbane, Australia.
The exhibition's aim is to inspire children to expand their interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. It also offers visitors a chance to build their own LEGO structures and put them on display throughout the exhibition's run through Apr. 24, 2022.
"It's open-ended thinking to encourage the next generation of the STEM workforce," Chavez says. "When you think about it a little deeper, you can learn about scale and proportion and a lot of other concepts."
Even though most of the LEGO bricks are cubed or rectangular cuboids, McNaught and his builders were still able to reconstruct the curved and rounded features of some of the towers such as the observation deck at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto.
The LEGO models are tall and each has a unique design that can be examined up close and even next to each other, so guests can learn about its engineering and architectural achievements.
"[The buildings] are not often compared to each other," McNaught says in the video. "So that's the benefit of the exhibit."