15-year-old Ahmedabadi boy makes massive Lego city

What started off as a pastime activity for Raunak Kataria is now a collection of buildings made of thousands of Lego blocks, which includes the Burj Khalifa, Statue of Liberty, Big Ben and White House.

The Danish toy manufacturing giant Lego has recently been busy building Lego luxury cars that can actually be driven, and celebrating the 40th birthday of its tiny plastic Lego people, called Minifigures. Closer home, meanwhile, 15-year-old Raunak Kataria has created a massive 144 sq. ft. dream city, using only small plastic Lego bricks. A student at Ahmedabad International School, the young Lego fan built this mini-city in just a matter of three years. The model is replete with boats, cars, buildings, roads and even its own island!

Raunak shared that his Lego obsession began when he was eight years old. When did he get started on this project? “I decided to create a full-fledged Lego township when I was suffering from a fractured leg,” he explained. “It started off as a pastime activity but evolved into a discipline, which eventually continued for three long years.” Raunak learnt how to make these Lego structures by reading the instruction manuals that came with the toy boxes of the Lego Architecture, Lego City, Lego Pirate and Lego Ideas series. He estimates that a single building in his mini-city uses 500-800 bricks.

The whole structure is placed on three table tennis tables at his home. Raunak warmly welcomes anybody who wants to have a personal look at his creation. Friends, family and schoolmates have all been fascinated on seeing Raunak build the Burj Khalifa, Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, White House and UN Headquarters, among the buildings in his city. Raunak’s mother Amita Kataria explained, “The 144 sq. ft. large city is inspired by the town planning of New York, Berlin and London.”

Raunak has paused his Lego hobby for a while to prepare for his board exams. He wants to pursue a career in the automobile sector in the future, and be a businessman one day.

Lego, which was named by the consultancy Brand Finance as the “world’s most powerful brand” in 2015, replacing Ferrari, has manufactured 600 billion Lego bricks since the company’s inception in 1949. The Lego assembling process has been a top favourite choice of play for kids and adults alike, and is known to help people enhance their problem-solving and mathematical thinking skills. The record for the world’s largest Lego structure is held by Land Rover for a car advertisement it made in 2016 that featured a 42-foot-tall replica of London’s Tower Bridge.