Build LEGO City Buildings to Scale

Here’s a fun LEGO building challenge that is also a MATH ACTIVITY! Build famous buildings to scale with LEGO bricks.

This is a fabulous activity for using proportions in real life. You can do this LEGO challenge at home, but I also think it’s a wonderful activity for a math class. Assign each student to build a different building, and you’ll end up with a whole LEGO city built to scale!

I would recommend this activity for 6th – 8th grade, or ages 11 – 14.

But it really depends on the student! Some 5th graders will be ready for this.

Here’s the process for building a famous building to scale with LEGO bricks:

Step 1: Choose a famous building.

Some suggestions:

• Willis Tower, formerly named the Sears Tower (Chicago)
• 875 North Michigan Avenue (Chicago)
• One World Trade Center (NYC)
• The Empire State Building (NYC)
• Central Park Tower (NYC)
• Shanghai Tower (China)
• Burj Khalifa (Dubai)
• And there are many more!

Step 2: Research the height of your building.

You may also want to require students to break down the height by structures. For example, if the building has a spire at the top, what part of the total height is the spire?

We chose to build the Empire State Building because I think it’s a classic looking building, and I thought it would be fun to build with LEGO bricks (and it was!)

The Empire State Building was completed in 1931. It’s total height is 1,454 feet, with the spire accounting for 204 feet of that.

Step 3: Choose a scale, and set up your proportion to calculate how tall your LEGO building should be.

I found that 150 ft. to 1 inch is a good scale for a LEGO building. If you look at my photos and think your buildings need to be smaller, you can increase it to 175 ft. to 1 inch or even 200 feet to 1 inch.

Using my scale, I set up my proportion like this:

1 inch/ 150 feet = x inches/ 1,454 ft.

I used cross multiplication to calculate that my LEGO building should be 9.69 inches to the top of the spire.

Then I broke it down further and calculated that the spire should be about 1.35 inches or that total height.

In the photo above, I’m considering the spire to be the gray bar and the 2 x 2 gray cone brick. That’s a little under 1.35 inches, but it’s close.

I didn’t calculate out the other sections of the building, but I did look at a picture as a guide for the proportions.

It would be good to have your students also figure out the width that their LEGO building should be in proportion to the real one. I had that thought after the fact, but I do think my building looks fairly accurate.

Make this a math class project:

This LEGO project would make the perfect math class project. In addition to the LEGO building, ask your students to create an information page that shows their math calculations as well as facts about the building they chose.

Need more LEGO math ideas?

We have a whole collection of LEGO math activities to teach fractions, multiplication,

See them here: LEGO Math Activities