The University of Texas at Dallas has unveiled a recreation of the campus using LEGOs. "UTD in Brick" is now on display at the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
"We started building in the order the buildings were built on the campus," says Kurt Zimmerle, one of the two who built the recreation. "We started with the first building, the Founders Building, and continued to build progressively through time. It's like having time-lapse photography of the college slowly growing to now."
Zimmerle is from Michigan but worked with Texas native Roldan Grace. Grace says he lives about three hours from the UT Dallas campus and made several trips and took several hundred pictures "just to get an overall idea. What colors are the campus? How many buildings are there? What are we going to need to create this project?"
Grace says they used about 1.5 million LEGOs and spent about 360 hours building 23 buildings.
"What really helped was Google Maps. We used Google Maps and a lot of satellite imagery to help the whole layout and get it started," he says.
Despite Zimmerle using his own LEGO collection of about 1.5 million bricks, he says they needed to order additional bricks when they arrived to create the campus properly.
"I can't bring it all with me. We don't have a big enough vehicle to pack it," he says. "For the magnolia trees, we need this part, this part and this part. This building's curved, we need some rounded pieces for that, and we need more windows. There's a construction zone in the back."
Zimmerle is an art teacher in Cheboygan, Michigan. Grace says he would like to continue working with LEGOs and would enjoy working for the company.
Zimmerle had previously designed the Dallas skyline creating 30 buildings; he created 45 buildings to produce the Oklahoma City skyline.
"When the buildings are big, tall and interesting, that's a lot of fun because when you step back, you're like, 'ta da!' But these buildings are small, and each one has some unique flavor to it," he says.
The recreation of the campus will stay at UT Dallas and then be moved to Galleria Dallas for Thanksgiving through New Year's Day. Zimmerle says UT Dallas rented his bricks for a year, and then "it's sort of up for grabs. I may come down, throw it in some bins, bring it home, sort the bricks and make something else."
David Matthews, the director of the Retail Innovation and Strategy Excellence (RISE) Center at UT Dallas, had previously set up another LEGO exhibit at the Galleria 15 years ago, and the mall contacted him about setting up another exhibit. He says the LEGO exhibit can draw a lot of interest, but the project can also help students with an interest in learning about business.
"Maybe if there's a tie-in to UT Dallas, and maybe if there's a way to get students to staff it, maybe if there's a way students could run the store, manage it, merchandise it, that could give really great retail experience," he says.
Matthews watched as the pair built the campus in the School of Management over two and a half weeks.
"They have incredible attention to detail like the Starbucks logo on the student center and the shape of the Athenaeum. Those aren't easy things," he says.
Zimmerle and Grace say the toughest part for them was the alumni center because it required a shade of red LEGO no longer made.
"It's a really unique color they stopped producing, so those pieces would be the hardest to replace," Zimmerle says. "One of the things I talk about in my class all the time is art teaches you a couple things whether you're going into art or not. It teaches you to be a problem solver, and it teaches you to have patience. You need both of those to make it in life, and I stress that with my kids. How many times have you painted a tree? Three times? Well, try 300. It'll get better every time you do it, and you have to have patience to get through the process."
