New LEGO skyscraper exhibit at Seattle's MOHAI shows off some impressive building blocks

Buildings in the new MOHAI exhibit “Towers of Tomorrow with LEGO Bricks” stand in the center of a display where people can also create structures of their own using the toy blocks. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

The most impressive skyline view in Seattle is coming to the inside of the city’s Museum of History and Industry.

But what makes this “view” at MOHAI especially fun and interactive, is that it features recreations of iconic skyscrapers from all over the world, constructed in painstaking detail out of LEGO bricks.

“Towers of Tomorrow with LEGO Bricks,” a new traveling exhibition, opens Saturday and is sure to impress everyone from architecture geeks to little kids (and adults) who can’t get enough of the colorful, plastic toy.

Featuring 18 buildings built at 1:200 scale, the exhibit is the work of Ryan McNaught, one of only 21 LEGO “Certified Professionals” in the world. The Australian is known as “The Brickman,” and he and his team used more than half a million LEGO bricks and devoted thousands of hours to build the structures featured in the exhibit.

Three buildings in the “Towers of Tomorrow” exhibit, including the Burj Khalifa, right, are on display in the main hall at MOHAI. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

The exhibit features towers such as Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper at 2,723 feet. The LEGO version is 162.99 inches tall, built with 48,365 bricks over 135 hours. Other buildings include the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Shanghai Tower, Petronas Twin Towers, CN Tower, Willis (Sears) Tower and more.

And LEGO fans who visit can test their own construction skills with more than 200,000 loose LEGO bricks available in special build areas.

“This is a really fun hands-on exhibit. And by hands on I really mean hands on,” said MOHAI Executive Director Leonard Garfield during a media preview of the exhibit on Wednesday.

A closer look at the LEGO detail on the Petrona Twin Towers, a 1,483-foot skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

“Towers of Tomorrow” provides a look at both LEGO history and a closer examination of architectural history across the globe.

“There’s a lot to learn in working with LEGOs, particularly about design and architecture,” said MOHAI’s Devorah Romanek, chief of exhibits and head of interpretive services. “You can learn about modularity and grammar, and being additive or subtractive, analytical and logical, as well as creative. There’s all this opportunity in this play.”

The exhibit runs through Sept. 22. Watch this video detailing some of the build process.

Keep scrolling for more images from GeekWire’s tour: