A thousand little pieces

The Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) has an amazing library. I expected something staid and boring inside the modernist Walter Schroeder building fronted by Kilbourn. Filled with A/V databases, e-books, journals, and diverse print materials, it’s what you’d expect from a thoroughly professional place, but beyond that, what I didn’t expect was a giant Lego replica of Miller Park.

Thousands of Legos. A colorful scenario completely detailed. It lights up; the roof is motorized. On the day I visited, accompanied by my 9-year-old grandson who expressed curiosity about engineering, we spent considerable time gazing at the wonder, conceived and begun in 2001. The idea progressed through various stages, the most recent being Version 8.

And who is the wizard behind this wonder? It’s an MSOE grad, Tim Kaebisch. You can find his web pages here , but due to an electronic crash and burn ( in a twist of irony), the site itself is under re-construction.

Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Think about it.

I’m going to cheat a little on the “One Piece at a Time” theme and write more because the day was superb, so why not walk west a bit to The Grohmann Museum and visit the rooftop garden where life-size bronze sculptures gaze out over Milwaukee’s skyline?  The last of the season’s flowers were abloom and the sky was azure, a perfect backdrop….theatrical one might say, a kind of heroic pageant titled Man at Work. An MSOE grad tending the front desk in the building’s lobby said he returned to MSOE studies after being laid-off from his short lived mechanical engineering position.

Incidentally, the man at work sculptures include at least one female, a mine worker. I’m just saying.