Rebirth of New Orleans by Nathan Sawaya

Check out what he had to say about this experience

drew my inspiration from the many drawings that the campaign received from children across the country. Children were asked to draw and write about what they felt was important for the rebuilding of New Orleans. Through the thousands of pictures, I definitely noticed that no matter where they were from, all kids had very similar ideas about what was important for a city. It would need a fire station, a hospital, schools and a park. They were drawn in different styles and a plethora of colors, but I saw these themes repeated again and again. Other common themes included hotels, houses and libraries. In the end, I used these drawings as inspiration to create the sculpture.

I really wanted to capture the look of the drawings by making the buildings brightly colored, slightly crooked or slanted in places, and the windows not always lining up.

The piece took me over six weeks to build and I used over 120,000 LEGO
elements. It's permanently on display in the Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library.