August 24, 2007
Tower Envy
In mere days, Toronto's most famous tower will lose its status as the world's tallest freestanding structure to the 800-metre Burj Dubai skyscraper being built in the United Arab Emirates. So, what's a perpetually-overcompensating metropolis to do when size no longer matters?
It's what you build it with that counts, of course—and the latest erection to grace our skyline is a 29.3-metre spire constructed entirely out of LEGO. Appropriately, it's the tallest tower ever built from the colourful blocks, jerking the Guinness record title from puny Carlsbad, California, which was about a metre shorter, measuring from the base to the tip of the shaft.
The architects of Toronto's latest achievement are Danish LEGO engineers Per Knudsen and Erik Therkelsen, who solicited the help of CNE attendees to snap together more than 465,000 plastic bricks into a four-finned obelisk similar in the shape to the CN Tower. Visitors can visit the creation just west of the CNE Food Building until the end of the Exhibition, when some fat bully will show up and kick it over before stealing everyone's lunch money.
Photos by Torontoist reader Margot Lewis.
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Damn Bullies!! Had a good laugh reading that last line - cheers mate!
Too bad the photo didn't quite capture the CN Tower's shaft in the background!
Some good engineering lessons here for the kids. The parabolically tapering lego tower mirrors that of the CN, because that is the most efficient shape for a tower that has maximum moment loads at the base.
Interesting that they went with a four-fin shaft instead of the tower's three-fin shaft. No doubt this was a function of the geometry of rectangular lego blocks more than any particular structural efficiency.
Since lego lacks the post-tensioning cables and reinforcing bars of the concrete in the tower, there is nothing to resist tensile loads from wind. Hence, the need for the guy wires.
Great idea, well done!
I think the four-fin design was because of how the blocks went together: groups of people were assigned to do single blocks of a certain size however they wished (as seen with the "Dad" block in the photo), and they were assembled into the final tower by the engineers. I'm assuming that the three-fin design would have been an issue to create effectively and easily with the LEGO blocks for that modular design.
You can see more of how the tower was put together, including the first set of blocks at the base, via the photographer's link at the bottom of the article.
of course it will be a fat bully, only kind of bully there is!
hey, curious .. where'd all the lego pieces come from??
The LEGO engineers bring it all with them??
They were supplied by LEGO, I believe.