Fourth-year student Thomas Lockwood (Engr ’14) started his Lego masterpiece during his first year and worked on it during winter and summer breaks. Lockwood, who used Thomas Jefferson’s original plans, his own photos and a computer program that generates a 3-D rendering to plan the model, says the miniature Rotunda is made of about 6,500 Lego blocks.

“I’ve been building with Lego since I was four, which greatly influenced my decision to major in mechanical engineering,” Lockwood says. “Normally I build airplanes or vehicles from sci-fi movies, but I was surprised to learn no one had built the Rotunda in Lego yet and felt obligated to try building my own model.”