Lego Master

Stuart Harris has made a career out of building with LEGO bricks. He’s a designer who has created some of the world’s largest LEGO structures, like a 10-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex.

“As a kid, I would construct a LEGO set according to the instructions,” says Harris, “then I’d immediately take it apart and build something from scratch.”

Harris studied art and design in college. He then got a job designing children’s toys. Today, Harris works for LEGO House, a play space and museum in Denmark. He creates sculptures seen by thousands of visitors each year.

Last year, Harris completed the design and construction of the 49-foot-tall Tree of Creativity. It’s made up of a whopping
6.3 million bricks! Harris followed these steps of the engineering-design process to create this amazing structure.

Harris and his team started by brainstorming several ideas for a design. While deciding on the concept for the Tree of Creativity, he thought about potential problems and limitations, such as the size and shape of the room, and if the floor could hold the weight of a 40,000-pound sculpture.

Next, Harris wrote a plan with everything from the project’s measurements to its colors. He then created a small-scale model of the tree using LEGO bricks. After that, Harris created a computer simulation of the structure. He used this type of model to test that it would be safe and wouldn’t fall apart once it was built.

The team built the actual tree in sections. They constructed each branch, parts of the trunk, and leaves in a big warehouse.

More than a dozen trucks carried the sections to LEGO House, where they were put together into a complete sculpture. Teamwork is an essential part of designing a giant LEGO sculpture. It took nearly three years and a crew of six to build the Tree of Creativity.

Harris says it would have taken a person 12 years to finish it alone. “If you’re not a great team player, often your ideas won’t go anywhere,” he says.

Throughout the building process, the LEGO team tested the structure and made adjustments. For instance, workers tried many designs before they found one they thought looked the most like real tree bark.

“This process takes a lot of patience and determination,” Harris says. “But it pays off in the end as you stand there watching people react to your design—inspecting and enjoying all the little details you worked so hard on.”