While the Class of 2025 may not be able to fully enjoy the architecture of the Sir Christopher Wren Building towards the end of their academic career, they will be the ones to kickstart a new project: constructing the building and the historic campus out of LEGO bricks.
The community-driven project will involve over 200,000 LEGO bricks, encompassing the Wren Building, the President’s House and the Brafferton Building. Funded by D. Bruce Christian ’73, the model will be around 8 ft sq. and be put up for public display in the Wren Building.
Director of Wren Operations and Events Charles E. Fulcher Jr. ’99 is spearheading the project. He says the two most exciting goals he has for this project are the educational opportunity and the chance for the community to come together. Fulcher also oversees and works with the Spotswood Society, a student organization that gives tours of the Wren Building to the general public.
“What this model will do when it’s completed, it’s [an] 8 feet square model. It will give [the Spotswood Society] a way to talk about the relationship between the historic campus buildings, to talk about the age of the building,” Fulcher said. “When you look at the red on the outside, the different brick patterns inform the age of different parts of the building, the chapel has largely different brick than the rest of the building because it was added later and that will be reflected in the LEGO model, so they’ll be able to use that as a tool to talk about the structure.”
Fulcher is partnering with Sensational Bricks, a company based in England who specializes in large LEGO builds. Ed Diment and Romão Santos, who lives in Portugal, work with Fulcher to design the LEGO build itself.
“Although this is designed by somebody across the Atlantic, it’s being built by the Tribe. It’s all those hands and those parts of the community coming together,” Fulcher said.” I’ve seen some other colleges who have big builds like this, like The Ohio State University has like a giant version of their football stadium or Notre Dame was a big thing. I even checked our sister up in Charlottesville, they have one of the Rotunda. It’s only 6,500 pieces, but all of those other projects are the work of one person.”
Fulcher has started undertaking the building process. After coordinating with Dean of University Libraries Carrie Lynn Cooper, he recruited about 20 Swem Library Ambassadors to come sort the LEGO bricks. The build itself is divided into different modules, with pieces sorted from other sets.
He conceived the idea after reflecting on another project he worked on: LEGO Cathedral, a replica of the Washington National Cathedral. He brought this previous work to Senior Vice President for University Advancement Matthew Lambert ’99, who coordinated the Wren Building effort with University Advancement.
Fulcher worked at the National Cathedral for 14 years, eventually serving as its director for Visitor Programs from 2014 to 2020. Santos, who is designing the model for the College’s project, also designed the model for the national cathedral.
“We started work on it in about 2018, publicly launched it in 2019, but the idea was to engage families and kids and people who maybe don’t go to church but who might be fascinated by the building itself or the architecture, or even people who are really into LEGOs, and to get them involved with the building because you don’t have to be a Christian or even a person of faith necessarily to be sort of captivated by the architecture of this place,” Kevin Eckstrom, the cathedral’s chief public affairs officer, said. “And so, the LEGO project was one more way to invite audiences in to experience the building, but also to see it on a little bit more of a human scale.”
The cathedral project is still active, with the plan to utilize approximately 500,000 LEGO bricks.
“If you missed the 83 years of construction it took to build Washington National Cathedral, now’s your chance to watch the Cathedral rise again – only this time out of LEGO® bricks! When completed, over 500,000 LEGO bricks will form a 1:40 scale replica of the Cathedral that’s more than 13 feet long, eight feet tall and bigger than a minivan!” the cathedral’s website reads.
Eckstrom says projects like these are a great way for the public to learn more about buildings and appreciate them more as a lived environment. One moment he still appreciates was when former U.S. secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg visited the National Cathedral in 2020 and helped build the model with his children and Eckstrom’s children.
“Charles has never met a LEGO project that he doesn’t like, so he’s exactly the right person to be leading this for William and Mary, because he was the one who had the vision of what this could be here at the cathedral. I think yours is probably going to be done well before ours, but that’s okay,” Eckstrom added.
Fulcher aims to take different parts of the model to different events, such as events for the Class of 2025 or alumni events, to allow for broad community participation in the model’s construction.
“This will come to light by everybody’s hands coming together to build it. I think that’s one of the other great reasons for the Tribe: Class of ’25 helping us through this soft launch just to get it off the ground, see them off the door with something special, and then over the next year roll it out much more broadly,” Fulcher said.
