UT Tower: A LEGO® creation by Ben Rollman : MOCpages.com

UT Tower

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Main building tower at the University of Texas at Austin

About this creation

Just updated. Got a few nicer pictures to add. The tower hasn't seen much improvement but it will be going through a structural reconfiguration to keep the bottom elements from bowing and bending. It will also be going through some lighting changes to make it light up orange, if possible. The tower's been seen at a couple events and will likely be at Austin's Brick Fiesta convention this June, so come see it in person.

This build is for my girlfriend's new user group, the University Lego User Group or ULUG at UT Austin. For the recruitment table at the beginning of school, she thought it'd be neat to have a Lego UT Tower. So we started building it in May after a couple weeks of discussion and design and here is the finished product.

I say finished because the mail parts are done. We were short a few tiles so we'll be ordering those, but they're greebled accents and don't affect the building.

The building is about 125cm tall at the antenna. We spent probably close to $300 getting parts in addition to all the bricks we had. I haven't weighed it, but I'm guessing it's about 10lbs. I have no idea the brick count, but it has to be in the 4,000-5,000 area. I may one day try to figure out exactly how many.

The light is just a rope light you can get at Walgreens for $5, we've got it cable-tied pretty tight. The middle (as with most of the building) is hollow and the string just sits in there. Pro tip, 2x4 trans clear plates are expensive.

We still have to fix (ie put in) a clock, but we were disheartened by the lack of moving parts for clocks that are small enough. It'll be a printed sticker or piece of card stock or maybe even a couple odd bricks for hands.

This will probably stay together for a long time and hopefully tour with TexLUG.

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I made it

Ben Rollman

May 17, 2012

Quoting Mike Byrnes incredible! How many pieces? approximate cost of entire project? I would love to do something similar but less complicated for my son's wedding display. He graduated from UT.

Not really sure on the piece count, around 2,500 maybe. It's fairly hollow so it could be less. I don't think we spent more than $300, and that was mostly white exterior brick. We had a lot to start with. If you're local to Austin, we still have it together if you'd like to "rent" it. :)

I like it

Mike Byrnes

May 15, 2012

incredible! How many pieces? approximate cost of entire project? I would love to do something similar but less complicated for my son's wedding display. He graduated from UT.

I made it

Ben Rollman

April 20, 2012

Quoting Ben Hobin Hey can i buy the legos from u

Yes, for $5,000.

Ben Hobin

April 19, 2012

Hey can i buy the legos from u