A replica buffalo made of Legos at the Heritage Center’s newest Lego CU Boulder exhibit is just one of many buffaloes featured on the Lego campus. Kits to build these buffaloes are now on sale to the public at the Center. (Jade Lang/CU Independent)
CU Boulder’s campus takes on another dimension in the Heritage Center’s newest exhibit, “Hit the Bricks!”. The 12 by 17 foot display weighs more than 1000 pounds and is built from half a million Lego bricks.
The Lego replication of campus started as a vision of Allyson Smith, the Heritage Center’s director. After about 11 months of planning and designing with nine Lego enthusiasts from the Colorado/Wyoming Lego Users’ Group, the miniature University of Colorado was revealed to the public in a grand opening last Saturday.
“The Heritage Center started planning the buildings and placements with the Lego user group builders and volunteers ten months ago, building started two months ago and installation began three weeks ago,” said Heritage Center curator Mona Lambrecht.
The Lego-ized CU features iconic sites from around campus, including Folsom Field, Old Main, Macky Auditorium and the Foucault Pendulum in Duane Physics. It also includes memorable campus events, such as the Nearly Naked Mile and the Rocky Mountain Showdown. The replica even has Lego policemen surrounding a bear climbing a tree outside of William’s Village.
The display captures the daily lives of CU students realistically, with students walking to class and attending a football game, but also in fiction, with students excavating dinosaur bones and defending Macky Auditorium in a Lego battle.
Senior Riley Walker was amazed at the amount of detail and precision that went into making the model.
“It’s awesome. I don’t know who did it, but they paid a lot of attention to little details—you could look at it a hundred times and see something new every time,” said Walker.
Chip the Buffalo attended the grand opening on Saturday, and visitors had the opportunity to purchase miniature Lego buffaloes.
Currently, there is no planned date for the exhibit to be taken down.
“Our plan is that it will be here for two or three years, and hopefully every homecoming we would refresh it and release new pieces,” said Julann Andresen of the Alumni Association staff.
To see the exhibit or learn how to get involved in the project, students can visit the CU Heritage Center, located on the third floor of Old Main, Monday through Friday from 10 am to 5 pm.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Bethlehem Feleke at Bethlehem.Feleke@colorado.edu.
