In late 2020, Adam Mael placed the final LEGO piece on a project that took the better part of three years to complete.

The replica of the Diag and the buildings, sidewalks and trees surrounding the heart of Central Campus — all made entirely of LEGO with the exception of two stickers — drew admiration and awe back then and still does today when Mael displays it or people find it on the internet.

 “I was blown away by the response the project got and still gets,” said Mael, a Ph.D. program coordinator in the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Academic Services Office. “I was just building it because I wanted to. I figured people would like seeing it, but the reaction was far more than anything I could have expected.”

The Record caught up with Mael to see what he’s been up to since crafting the Central Campus project and, according to him, he’s “started and abandoned a million projects” while continuing to wow and amaze people with the ones he does complete.

“I had the chance to display it a few times and really love getting to see people’s reaction and talk with them about the model,” he said. “It also led to some other fun Michigan LEGO projects.”

More U-M creations

The Alumni Association was among the first to reach out to Mael after seeing the Central Campus piece. The Facebook post the association shared of Mael’s project received wide acclaim and prompted the association to commission Mael to create a couple of projects to display in its newly remodeled building.

Those pieces — a LEGO replica of The Cube, or “Endover,” and a Michigan football helmet — were displayed in the building after it reopened following the renovations in 2021. Mael had previously created a replica helmet out of LEGO, but The Cube was new.

It also inspired him to try a project closer to his office on North Campus. In front of the G.G. Brown Building on Hayward Street sits a 25-foot-tall kinetic sculpture called “3 Cubes in a Seven Axis Relationship: Homage to DS and GR, 2016-2017.”

“I figured once I had built a single cube, how hard could three be?” he said.

Turns out, it was more challenging than he anticipated as the plastic LEGO axles proved too weak to support the weight of the cubes, so Mael improvised by purchasing some CNC machined aluminum LEGO pieces that could handle the model’s weight.

Mael, who has the model displayed in his office, said he finds inspiration in just about any place he visits.

“A lot of times I walk through the world and see things in LEGO,” he said. “If I walk by an interesting building, my brain tries to puzzle out how I’d build it, what scale it would be, and what pieces I’d use.”

The inspiration for one of his most daunting pieces came courtesy of the 2023 Michigan football team that won the national championship and with it the gold trophy with a football-shaped top and black base upon which it sits.

About a week after the Wolverines secured the trophy in Houston, Mael went to work to build a LEGO replica.

“It perfectly coincided with when my son started reliably sleeping through the night,” Mael said. “Rather than get an extra few hours of sleep a night, I finally had more time for late-night LEGO building.”

To get the proper color for the trophy, Mael had to special order gold LEGO bricks, which are not as widely available as yellow. The entire piece required roughly 3,000 to 3,500 pieces, three months and a lot of engineering and advice to complete.

“I got some much-needed guidance from other LEGO builders, including assistance with 3D modeling of the trophy,” he said. “In order to get more detail into the sculpture I built it with pieces facing out on all sides rather than just facing up.

“The model has a mostly hollow core that each of the four faces of the trophy attaches to. In addition to getting the shape of the trophy right I also had to build it in a structurally sound way with many small pieces.”

Mael’s creation is about two-thirds the size of the actual trophy and resembles it to the point that the gold trophy can be removed from the black base.

Closer to home

Despite the challenge and creativity involved in all those pieces, they are not Mael’s favorite. That belongs to a stunning mosaic of his beloved golden retriever Maple. Both Maple and his younger retriever, Willow, have been the subjects of mosaics over the years, but in 2023, Mael decided to try something more abstract with non-standard LEGO pieces after seeing similar projects by other artists.

The first one of Willow took about five months and about 7,000 pieces, mostly lavender, dark blue, white and pink.

“It was a very good learning experience for making use of different textures and layering colors,” he said. “These projects are incredibly slow-moving at the start. I’m still trying to figure out what I want the finished product to look like and there is a never-ending cycle of building and revising. You have to be several feet away to really see the image clearly, so this involved a lot of trial and error to learn what works.”

Two years later, he used a similar technique for Maple’s project, which took nearly double the number of pieces and incorporated nearly all tiny, non-traditional ones such as plant leaves and flower petals.

“I had callouses on my thumb for a very long time,” Mael said.

Brick Bash

Last year, Mael took the dog mosaics to display at Brick Bash, a two-day hands-on LEGO-building exhibition and fundraiser for the Skyline High School band program. The event attracts builders from all over Michigan and beyond and draws thousands of visitors, many of whom were blown away by the mosaics Mael brought.

He has displayed the Central Campus project there before, but considering it sits on 16 baseplates that are 10-by-10 inches apiece and takes over an hour to put together, he does not plan to bring it to this year’s event Feb. 28 and March 1. It sits in homemade crates in his LEGO building/work-from-home office space.

Instead, he plans to bring new creations, smaller in scale but equally meaningful. A Taylor Swift fan, Mael said he has built about 30 minifigure habitats based on songs by the superstar. Each piece sits on an 8-by-8 LEGO base and can be attached to one another.

He plans to take a pyramid of 28 of these creations to Brick Bash.

“Some are scenes based directly from lyrics, others are based on a music video, and some are silly interpretations,” he said. 

For “Honey” from her latest album, he made a minifigure habitat using a beekeeper. “Love Story” is represented by a scene with “Romeo” calling up to “Juliet” on her balcony, and a wedding being interrupted is Mael’s take on “Speak Now.”

“It has been really fun to work on something that can go from concept to finished product in a few hours,” he said. “It’s a good creative outlet, a way to combine two things I like, and I enjoy the challenge of building something on a much smaller scale.”

He also recently completed three large croissants that he plans to deliver to family members who own a bakery in Brooklyn, New York. Down the road, he said he’s been tinkering with the idea of designing a perpetual slinky staircase — essentially a LEGO escalator — or perhaps a team or two in the Athletic Department will again provide inspiration.

“Maybe the men’s or women’s basketball teams will give me a reason to design something new in a few months,” he said.