A group of Milwaukee School of Engineering students recently completed a five-foot model of Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa out 18,000 lego pieces. The tower was commissioned and paid for by the Italian Community Center for this year’s Festa Italiana, which will be held Thursday, July 21 through Sunday, July 24 at the Summerfest Grounds in Milwaukee.
“The Italian Community Center came to us with the idea in mind that they wanted something built out of legos for this year’s festival,” said Justin Cosgrove, junior at MSOE and lead on the project. “They didn’t really know what they wanted, but we, as architectural engineers, decided a building would be best and settled on the Leaning Tower of Pisa because of its recognition.”
The group consisted of six to ten members of MSOE’s Student Architectural Engineering club. According to Cosgrove, the group logged approximately 93 hours of work from beginning to end. With the base, the statue weighs about 125 pounds, Cosgrove said.
The statue will be displayed at Festa Italiana’s new ‘Piazza di LEGO’ area on the north end of the Summerfest grounds. A lego contest will take place each day where children of all ages will be given a famous structure to reconstruct out of legos. Prizes will be given for the best replicas. In addition to the new Leaning Tower of Pisa statue, Milwaukee’s Miller Park LEGO construction, built by MSOE alumnus Tim Kaebisch in 2008, will also be displayed at Piazza di LEGO and MSOE students will be on hand to help children construct their own projects out of LEGOs during the day. For more information visit www.festaitaliana.com.
