LEGO "Babel Tower" Built by Tokyo University Lego Geek

An attractive exhibition is ongoing in Ueno, Tokyo, "Collection of museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Bruegel's "The Tower of Babel" and Great 1th Century Masters, April 18 through July 2.

Now, this episode has only a bit to do with the exhibition itself but primarily with a certain structure built in conjunction with it - a Tower of Babel built with LEGO pieces by a group of serious students enrolled at Japan's leading institution - Tokyo University.

The university has among other student clubs a rather well-known LEGO Club quite well-known among the LEGO freaks. This club chanced to assemble and exhibit a LEGO BABEL - a model of the Tower of Babel with 46,000 LEGO pieces, Friendship Tower as it was called, at the Tokyo Tower in collaboration with the exhibition.

The Tower Babel, of course, roots in Genesis 11 of the whole earth once being of one language and of one speech and of the story of a tower to Heaven the monolingual people wished to build, etc. A LEGO geek freshman, Shuto Takahashi, woke up one morning to decide to assemble a model Tower of Babel with LEGO pieces out of a picture.

Let Takahashi comment how he had figured out the whole project:

"I had a piece of the picture of Babel to start and 46,000 LEGO pieces in mind to assemble one 1.2m in height and 1m in diameter.

"A look at the picture gave me a rough idea how to go about it. I drew vertical and horizontal optional lines to confirm that the structure would end up a double helix. I figured to divide it into two, top and bottom, and further to divide the bottom part into four......."

Asked about what he would care to build from now on, Shuto Takahashi grinned and said that he would rather like to build more of subcultural nature." (Nathan Shiga)

Source: withnews