The Brooklyn Bridge

Features
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- Single tower design
I wanted to focus on the details of the tower architecture (those iconic arches, cornices, subtle angles). Making the whole bridge would mean making each tower really small, or the whole thing very large. Also, this design makes it easier to display on bookshelves and desktops.

- Microscale vehicles
The roadway is filled with cars, trucks, buses and the famous NYC yellow cabs.

- Glow in the dark
1x1 round plates line the edges of the roadway, the ends of the cables, and top of the tower.

- Multicolor, textured water below
Translucent blue and green 1x1x2/3 slopes were used to create a choppy water effect.

- Elliptical base
An offset, elliptical base was created further enhance the dynamic feeling of water around the bridge.

Background
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I lived in Manhattan for almost 5 years. During the last two, I worked in DUMBO, Brooklyn, a neighborhood just across the East River. DUMBO is situated between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and I would marvel at both structures daily. On summer days, I'd occasionally walk home after work across the Brooklyn Bridge, pondering its history and humble majesty, and dodging tourists and angry bicyclists. It was beautiful.

It all started with a late night sketch in April, 2013. Then lots of research, poring over photos of every detail of the Roeblings' masterpiece. Next came countless hours in Lego Digital Designer (LDD) (my first time using it). Designing and refining, trying to get the angles just right. Then ordering pieces on BrickLink and watching my vision come to life.

Building something in real life exposes aesthetic and technical challenges not apparent when viewing in LDD. Thus, there were many more iterations of ordering more pieces, taking it apart, and rebuilding.

One of the biggest problems was getting the look of the arches and the profile right. The real Brooklyn Bridge has some subtle slope transitions that are difficult to model in Lego at this scale.
Rather than flattening out the angles, which would have resulted in one big rectangular block, I chose to exaggerate them, like a caricature, in order to preserve their essence.

Please check out and support my Manhattan Bridge Cuusoo project. With your help, everyone can have a (Lego) piece of Manhattan and Brooklyn... your very own piece of New York! Thank you!