Volunteers and municipal workers from the city of Tel Aviv came together this week in hopes of establishing a new world record by building the world’s tallest tower of plastic toy bricks. When it was completed, the colorful spectacle of half a million brightly-colored construction blocks and LEGOs measured 118 feet (36-feet).
The structure was built in honor of eight-year-old Omer Sayag, a child who died of cancer in 2014 and loved building Lego towers during his illness. In his memory, the structure is named the “Omer Tower.”
tower drone from Tal Almog טל אלמוג on Vimeo.
The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality teamed up with Young Engineers, a group that promotes learning with toys bricks, to make the project happen over the course of a little more than a week, in the city’s centrally-located Rabin Square.
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Many people donated blocks and joined to help put the tower together over the course of 12 days. Volunteers at more than two dozen community organizations around the city worked from Dec. 12th to 24th to build parts of the tower, using blocks with their groups’ logo on it. Five thousand blocks were stacked together over the course of three days, with the final touches being added by crane on Wednesday, December 27. The tower features areas with designs of the Israeli flag, butterflies, Christmas trees, and Hebrew and Arabic inscriptions.
Omer Tower Toy Brick Structure. Photo via Kfir Sivan
The record-breaking project was the idea of one of Sayag’s teachers more than a year ago. “It was the idea of his former kindergarten teacher,” a spokesperson from the Tel Aviv mayor’s office told Reuters, “Building blocks were donated by residents, companies, and some were purchased using municipality funds.”
The Tel Aviv event was not sponsored by Lego. Also, there was no Guinness World Records representative or adjudicator on site to measure the length of the tower. Tel Aviv must wait for approval from the organization to confirm that it has beaten the record. The municipality told AFP that it will submit proof to Guinness, including photos taken from a drone.
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The Guinness World Records organization says the previous record was held by the Italian subsidiary of LEGO since 2015 when the group built a 115-foot (35.05 meters) tower for the Milan World Expo.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai told NBC News: “It’s a community effort to build from plastic elements the biggest tower in the world, 36 meters, as a community effort of all of the people of Tel Aviv — 26 community centers, Jews, and Arabs rich and poor, orthodox and secular.”
The bricks were grouped before they were stacked to build the tower. Photo via Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality Facebook.
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