Hasta La Ideas

LEGO lovers, particularly you parents whose kids will shortly be out of school: This week the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. launches Brick City, an exhibition of international streetscape creations by LEGO maestro Warren Elsmore.

“The National Building Museum’s mission is to inspire curiosity about the world we design and build. Brick City celebrates iconic architecture from cities around the world through carefully recreated constructions made from LEGO® bricks by U.K.-based artist Warren Elsmore.”

“Visitors will take a world tour discovering new destinations across all seven continents that include: 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.”

“The exhibition offers a chance to discover new buildings as well as some more recognizable icons—spotting surprising common ground between buildings thousands of years and miles apart, such as the Roman Colosseum and the 2012 Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. The magnificent centerpiece of the exhibition is London’s St. Pancras Station, measuring 12-feet-long and built from over 180,000 standard LEGO® bricks.”

The exhibit will also feature an interactive area where you and your brood can build your own LEGO creations; for once you’ll be able to rest easy knowing you’re not going to step on one of these bricks later.

For those of you not familiar with Elsmore’s work, or should I say the Elsmores’ work, Warren and spouse Teresa are world-traveling exhibition pros who have the packaging of their exhibitions—you never really think about how they have to crate all this stuff up—down to a science. On their blog they’ve got some shop shots revealing their packing practices, right down to how they lay out shipping containers in SketchUp.

If you can’t make Brick City this week, or even this month, breathe easy: The exhibition will be open for two years. Visiting info is here.