The University of California in San Diego Central Library was designed by William Pereira and opened in 1970, and could be considered a prime example of the nexus between futurist and brutalist architecture. It was later renamed Geisel Library in honour of the famed author Dr. Theodor Seuss Geisel who made substantial literary contributions to the library. The original design, known locally as "The Spaceship", featured 5 elevated floors supported by a reinforced concrete superstructure using 16 concrete brackets to hold up floors which otherwise would have been strenuous cantilevers, all mounted atop a two-storey base. It was later extended in the 1990s to include 2 subterranean levels on 3 sides under the extensive landscaping surrounding the base. This build started off with a Google search for "unusual architecture" and it didn't take long to find this building, and took even less time to decide I had to build it with LEGO. This minifig-scale 117000-part digital LEGO model includes the main building complete with all support beams & pillars, ceilings, floors, furniture & books, functional stairwells, elevators, toilets, and roof structure - right down to some of the "plumbing" on the roof. I had intended to possibly stop there but temptation got the better of me and I extended it to include the base and some of the surrounding subterranean structures and landscaping, although due to the vast size of the model and PC limitations the landscaping has only been built around the south side and all the base structures are mostly hollow - the digital equivalent of propping part of your model up on boxes or plywood shelves to save bricks :) Due to the model being too large to fully render some of the exterior views are composite renders where the upper and lower halves of the building are rendered separately and then composited together, resulting in some lighting, shadow, and reflection inconsistencies. I've also arranged for the windows to appear dark and reflective on most of these exterior shots since this is how the real Geisel looks on a bright sunny day and also allows me to disguise the fact that I had to disable much of the internals to get these to render. Other optimisations had to be made too, but I'll spare you the ugly details... The interior views are somewhat based on the real interiors but are by no means an attempt at an exact match. The limited photos I have inside the library span a 40-year period and the internals have changed somewhat in that time. The books are also a little large for this scale so I couldn't exactly replicate the number of bookcases anyway, and I also chose to replace some of the bookcases with more study tables and computer desks in order to save bricks and assist with the distribution of light within the model. Plus I've had to fit more support pillars than the real library probably has. Due to memory limitations restricting what I can show in the raytraced renders I've also included simpler screenshots which lack reflections and shadows but do allow me to show the whole model including seeing the furniture through the windows. Everything was built with MLCad, using LDView for previews and exporting to POV-Ray for ray-traced renders, with the assistance of some custom-written PHP scripting. All parts used are standard LEGO parts/colours attached in the correct fashion, albeit a few may be in a colour that part was never produced in. The real library: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geisel_Library https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp4EGHRT72Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOesyqHZtoE http://vimeo.com/69122962 https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Geisel+Library+Snake+Path,+San+Diego,+CA,+United+States&hl=en&ll=32.88121,-117.237623&spn=0.001231,0.001206&sll=32.864709,-117.253969&sspn=0.001751,0.002411&oq=Geisel+Library+&t=h&z=20 This LEGO model is available at the following links: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=550407 http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/401658 https://www.flickr.com/photos/71148741@N05/sets/72157649167540548/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_vO1acka1c Further information and individual image descriptions appear on MOCpages.