It’s a fact of (magazine) life, that there’s never enough space to fit in everything you want – a bit like going on holiday with a 7kg suitcase, right?

Well this issue, writer Peter Sackett whipped up an amazing story on a LEGO architecture exhibition, currently showing at the National Building Museum in Washington DC.

Unfortunately we couldn’t fit the complete story into the magazine… and lucky for us, we now have this fabulous forum, to give our stories a second life.

You must read on, as Peter’s a great writer, and the story of Adam Tucker, LEGO extraordinaire, is not to be missed!

Despite its vast size, the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. can typically accommodate only fragments of the edifices to which it pays homage – a notable finial, a run of cornice, or sheaves of conceptual sketches.

Until September, however, a cavernous corner room on the second floor contains 15 iconic structures in their entirety, albeit at 1:200 scale – the Jin Mao Tower, the Empire State Building and the colossal Burj Khalifa (reaching nearly 5.5-metres-high) among them.

Not architectural models but bona fide buildings, each is assembled incrementally, and solely, of LEGO bricks.

Their designer is Adam Reed Tucker, 38, a Chicago-area architect who, having grown impatient with a successful practice designing mostly high-end residences, rediscovered his favourite childhood toy in 2006.

“I wanted to do something that was more artistic, more sculptural,” Tucker explains. “I have an art background, and I was looking for maybe a career change – or at least a new medium.

“It dawned on me that I could use LEGO. They’re infantile in nature, and architecture can seem intimidating. I thought maybe the two could offset one another.”

What began as creative fiddling blossomed into remunerative, full-time experimentation.

In 2008, Tucker became a LEGO certified professional, one of 11 worldwide.

“We use LEGO bricks in an entrepreneurial way that promotes their use in a positive manner,” he says. “Anything outside of its usefulness as a toy, that’s primarily where my interest is.”

Tucker’s current work, officially endorsed by LEGO, involves recreating full-scale architecture that appeals to him.

“I just build what I want to build,” he says. “If I don’t like it, I won’t do it. Bridges and other feats of engineering, like a working model of Hoover Dam, would be challenging.”

Tucker also designs small-scale LEGO construction sets (Space Needle, White House, Fallingwater, Guggenheim Museum), sold through his home-based business, Brickstructures, Inc.

Yielding to his Chicago bias, Tucker’s first skyscraper was the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), erected at home where he presides over a collection of some 20 million bricks.

“Right now I’m very disorganised,” he admits. “I have them in bins everywhere sorted by colour and shape. But not in the kitchen or bedroom.”

Last year, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago took an interest in Tucker’s work and granted him a show, featuring several more of his monolithic towers built with the glossy plastic clinkers.

Among them were specimens that were designed but never actually realised, such as the Chicago Spire and 7 South Dearborn.

When the exhibit closed in July 2009, the National Building Museum offered to continue its run in Washington through to next September.

On one balmy afternoon, museum-going adults outnumbered the children.

The parents among them, entranced and visibly nostalgic, appeared only marginally committed to the role of chaperone while offspring ricocheted among the pixilated towers.

Spectacular disaster beckoned.

One gawking father, wearing a long-billed fisherman’s cap, leaned in closely to inspect the interior of the John Hancock Center (Tucker leaves one façade open to reveal the joinery).

Suddenly sensing faint contact, he pulled away in time to see the top of the building wobble a bit.

He winced, then exhaled deeply.

In assembling his structures Tucker is scrupulous. “I don’t glue, paint or modify,” he says.

“How inspirational would that be? I wouldn’t really be celebrating the LEGO brick.”

And he furnishes his own supplies. “I buy sets at the store – Toys R Us, Target, or the local LEGO store.

“But if I need a lot of one part I can order it directly from LEGO. It’s a privilege.”

In other words, no matter how elaborate, these buildings are within pinching distance for all of us.

Text by Peter Sackett.

LEGO Architecture: Towering Ambition
Until 5 September
National Building Museum, Chicago
nbm.org