Auburn University senior builds 22,700-piece LEGO model of campus with help from 200+ students
AUBURN, Ala. (WAKA) — A senior at Auburn University has recreated the campus in miniature — one LEGO brick at a time.
Inside the Melton Student Center, a 22,700-piece LEGO model features 80 buildings representing the heart of Auburn’s campus.
“It’s more than twice as much as the biggest LEGO set ever produced,” said Jack Lawson, an industrial and systems engineering major who designed the project.
Lawson, who has loved LEGO since childhood, said the idea began with smaller architectural-style builds.
“There’s this series of LEGOs … they call it architecture skylines,” Lawson said. “I made one of those for myself with Auburn so it had the main buildings like Cater hall, and Sanford Hall, but it was missing so many things. It didn’t have my engineering buildings so I decided to make a map of all of campus.”
He spent about two and a half years designing the model, applying engineering concepts along the way.
“Most of it was fine because LEGOs are square and buildings are mostly square,” Lawson said. “But some things are at an angle, like the stadium. I had to look up how to use LEGOs at an angle and actually used the Pythagorean theorem to get it right.”
To bring the project to life, Lawson partnered with the university’s program council, which helped fund the $3,500 cost and organized a large-scale build event. In total, 236 students participated in assembling the model.
“I think Auburn is uniquely close and family-oriented,” said Bailey Freeland, vice president of programming for the University Program Council. “We let groups of friends build together, so they got to bond over it and say ‘oh I lived here let’s build the dorm we lived in because that’s how we met’ so they got to connect their own stories to building Auburn.”
Lawson said one of the most rewarding parts has been watching students recognize pieces of their own experience in the display.
“I view it like my baby,” he said. “People walk by and say, ‘Oh, that’s where I lived,’ and it’s really nice to see people relate their experiences to this tiny model.”
The LEGO model is on display on the second floor of the Melton Student Center through the first part of May and will also be open to visitors during A-Day weekend.
As Lawson prepares to graduate, the project stands as a lasting tribute to the campus that shaped him — and to the hundreds of students who helped build it.
