Thursday, March 11, 2010

Don't breathe on it: Architect spends 44 days creating world's biggest house of cards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9xsbeZd_nIendofvid
[starttext]
By Mail Foreign Service

US 'cardstacker' Bryan Berg poses for photographers after successfully making a new Guinness World Record for the largest house of free-standing playing cards


An American architect has broken his own Guinness World Record by building the largest house of free-standing playing cards.

Bryan Berg used 218,792 cards to create a replica of the Venetian Macau, which is on display in its namesake luxury hotel and casino.

Berg took 44 days and 4,051 decks of cards to complete his model inside the Venetian, which sits at the heart of Macau's Cotai Strip, the China-ruled city's version of Las Vegas' neon alley.


The architect Berg used 218,792 cards to create a replica of the Venetian Macau, which is on display in its namesake luxury hotel and casino


Since Macau's casino sector liberalised in 2002, a spate of Las Vegas style gaming giants have transformed the once sleepy former Portuguese colony into the world's biggest gaming hub.

Weighing 44 stone and measuring 33 feet by just under 10 feet, the model which consisted of cards stacked without glue or tape, nearly collapsed several times.


The structure weighs 272 kg and measures 10 metres by 3 metres


'This has been the most ambitious project I have undertaken to date,' Berg said.

'It's really like a real construction project because you have to engineer every single adjacency and every support that's supporting everything above,' he added.

'I was inspired to stack cards by my card-playing grandfather; maybe I can inspire some visitors at The Venetian Macao to try their hand at building their own structures.

'There couldn’t be a more fitting place to build the world’s largest house of cards than at the world’s largest resort hotel,” he added.


Berg works on his masterpiece, which took 44 days to complete and nearly collapsed several times


The record breaker proudly accepts his certificate form the Guinness Book of World Records


Berg's creation is modelled on the Venetian, which sits at the heart of Macau's Cotai Strip, the China-ruled city's version of Las Vegas' neon alley

[endtext]

No comments:

Post a Comment