David Lorch is a biomedical engineer at the University of Michigan. He saw the Grand Hotel for the first time during a trip to the Upper Peninsula. He decided to recreate the it to a 9-foot scale.
“I had been looking for a large building to build out of legos, something big and cool looking,” he said. “And I saw the Grand Hotel and I thought, ‘That needs to be made out of lego.’”
Lorch created his model using online photos as a guide. He said representatives of the hotel saw his work in 2017 and asked him to bring it up to the hotel to display at an event in July.
“The people from Grand Hotel saw it and loved it and they really encouraged me to continue with it,” Lorch said. “They bought me up there to display it there. It was actually my first time to stay at the Grand Hotel and it was an incredible experience.”
After his experience at the hotel, he said he realized the 9-foot model was too big to be a lego set. Hotel staff sent Lorch photos of different angles of the building to refine his model. And just like that, one of Michigan’s greatest tourist destinations became a lego set.
“The Grand Hotel people helped me and encouraged me to submit it to Lego Ideas which is where you can submit ideas to possibly become lego sets.”
Lorch posted his idea to the Lego® website in September. So far his 710-piece model has received more than three-thousand votes of support.
Now he has until May of 2020 to get five-thousand supporters, That will add another year to his time limit. The final goal is to reach 10-thousand votes for Lego® to consider the model.
“I’m hoping we can get supporters as quickly as possible because ultimately I think that would be more impressive to lego,” Lorch said. “It would make it more likely that they would turn it to a set, the faster I get supporters as well.”
Lorch said it would be a dream come true to be able to present his model to his newborn son when he grows up.
“It would be great to be able to introduce my child to lego sets with my own design sets. I can’t even describe how awesome that would feel.”
It’s free to vote for Lorch’s model at the Lego® Ideas website.