Today’s guest article comes from BrickNerd patron Wayne Tyler. We’ve featured Wayne’s work many times, especially his thoughtful architectural builds. Today, he shares the story behind a microscale challenge that reshaped his approach to design.
A Warm Welcome to the LEGO World
Most builders start their LEGO journey in childhood. I started mine at 50. That late beginning changed the way I entered the LEGO community, wandering into it completely unprepared for how welcoming it would be.
The LEGO community is a special place for me. I did not have LEGO as a kid. I first encountered LEGO as an adult in 2016. I built my first MOC in 2017. Though an extreme noob, I was openly welcomed into the community everywhere… from LEGO brand store employees who helped me with advice on where to find sets which were no longer in the store, to the local LUG whose members answered newbie questions they’d probably heard repeatedly over the years, to the folks (AFOLs and organizers alike) at Bricks Cascade 2018 that walked me through my first big LEGO event.
One of the first people I met at that Bricks Cascade was Boone Langston (LEGO Master runner-up Season 1, now an official LEGO designer, and new judge on LEGO Masters). He welcomed me to Portland and Bricks Cascade and told me if I had any questions or problems, to track him down and he’d help out. At the time, I had no idea who Boone was… he’ll return a little later in this article.
The John Klesh Challenge
In 2019, I had been working on a microscale version of the National Mall MOC for two years. Though it was still incomplete, I wanted to show it to people who knew the Mall well… and that meant taking it on the road to BrickFair Virginia (BFVA).
At BFVA, I met ILUGNY member John Klesh. He was displaying his Micropolis builds and I was showing my microscale National Mall, so we were in the same display pod. Over the course of the event, he and I talked about a wide range of topics related to AFOLs, LEGO, and MOCs, among other things.
At the time, I still felt very new to the LEGO universe. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my abilities as a designer or builder. So John gave me a challenge to help clarify my thinking, boost my confidence, and test my skills—the John Klesh Challenge.
John said that I should take something I know and use that as the basis for his challenge. Since my one (and only) MOC was the National Mall, he challenged me to pick two of the buildings from it and create incredibly small versions of them… and do it by Christmas, which was five months away.
Here are the official “rules” for John’s challenge:
Pick one of the buildings I had built or was planning to build that I knew well.
Build a version as small as possible while still having it be identifiable. It didn’t have to be correct (whatever that may mean) or a perfect replica (because it wouldn’t be); it just had to be recognizable on its own, without any surrounding context.
Finish two of them by Christmas and send him photos as proof that I had completed the challenge.
Two things happen when you start building smaller than minifig scale: first, the pool of usable parts shrinks dramatically, and second, the amount of detail you can include almost disappears. For reference, the large version of my National Mall is about 1:300 scale (Micropolis is about 1:285), so we’re talking a very small MOC!
Building the National Museum of American History
The first building I chose was the National Museum of American History (NMAH), because that was the first MOC I designed and built for my National Mall. For the larger Mall version, it was a no-brainer—it’s based on 2×4 tiles for its exterior.
Here is my version of the NMAH in the same scale as the LEGO Lincoln Memorial (set #21022) and U.S. Capitol Building (set #21030).
It should have been easy to shrink down. Turned out… not so much.
Attempt #1
My first attempt was simply to make it as small as I possibly could. It came out nicely, but it certainly isn’t recognizable as the NMAH. It could be any rectangular white building.
However, the effort wasn’t wasted—it has since become my version of a sigfig… or rather, a sigarch?
Attempt #2
For the second attempt, I thought that if I made the model a little larger and added a bit of detail (like the front entrance), it would look more like the actual building. No… that didn’t work either. It still just looked like an anonymous white box.
However, this try taught me something valuable: printed parts can add detail where actual part geometry does not—or cannot. I used this insight later in the Capitol Building.
Attempt #3
With Attempts #1 and #2, I had been trying to keep the proportions (height, length, and depth) roughly in line with the real building. When that still didn’t remind me of the museum, I decided to toss accuracy in favor of feel. That’s when I hit on the idea of using the modified 1×2 brick with groove (part 4216) to approximate the exterior panels. Even though this version is much taller proportionally than the actual museum, it did evoke the overall feel of the building.
It turns out there are two things that create the essence of the NMAH: 1) the white color, and 2) the extruded panels. Every other detail that gets added is just a bonus.
Being extremely proud of my final version, I let John know:
“Here is the first. It’s the National Museum of American History built as small as I can while still retaining some of the elements that make it identifiable. It has 38 pieces and I think it is still recognizable at the NMAH.”
I didn’t tell him it had taken me two months of effort to figure it out.
Building the National Gallery of Art & National Air and Space Museum
Having chosen the National Museum of American History for the first of the two buildings in John’s challenge (it’s one of the easier buildings I’ve designed and constructed), I decided to tackle the most difficult museum I had built up to that point: the National Gallery of Art – East Building (NGA-East). Designed by I. M. Pei, there is not a right angle to be found. And just like the larger version, I struggled to make it look like what it was supposed to represent.
What finally worked for me was focusing on the building’s triangular shape. In the end, it took me 59 pieces and another month to figure out.
Finding that I was starting to get the hang of downsizing the buildings—and wanting a break from the larger version of the Mall—I decided to try another structure. I chose the National Air and Space Museum, which I found was defined most clearly by its three large bays with glass walls and roof.
By this point, I had learned that miniaturizing a building meant identifying its essential characteristic and leaning into it—highlighting the feature that truly defines the structure so the viewer recognizes it instantly.
I had finished John’s challenge before Christmas, and it was incredibly helpful. It did everything John said it would. I was more confident in my designs; I was better at picking out essential elements; and it certainly tested my building skills.
A Suitcase-Sized Mall
And that would have been it, except… in June of 2021, in the midst of COVID, I got an email from the Bricks Cascade folks. Instead of hosting their traditional LEGO event, they were going to put on a Bricknic—a one-day, outdoor, substantially scaled-down version of Bricks Cascade. I wouldn’t have made the trip to Portland just for that, but it turned out I’d be in the area on vacation at the same time. So, I signed up.
Well, the National Mall doesn’t fit into a suitcase. It doesn’t even fit into a car. I transport it to LEGO events in a van, and I certainly wasn’t going to drive that around on vacation. But the Bricknic invitation rekindled my interest in creating a Klesh Challenge version of the entire National Mall… something that would fit in a suitcase.
It took me a month to complete the Klesh version of the Mall. (For comparison, it took me two months just to finish the NMAH—the very first Klesh Challenge building.)
The full National Mall is just under 16 feet long; the Klesh version comes in at a suitcase-friendly 35 inches.
The Story Behind the Story
And now comes the rest of the story.
I completed the large version of the National Mall in 2024 and had been wanting to return to BrickFair one more time to get it in front of people who know the actual Mall. I was able to attend—and display—at BrickFair 2025.
While there, I met up with John Klesh again, and we shared memories from the 2019 show. When I brought up the John Klesh Challenge, he told me he had something to confess. The advice he had given me—the guidance that helped improve me as a designer and builder—was not originally his idea. The genesis of the challenge actually came from… Boone Langston.
I’ll let John take it from here:
“I first met Boone at BrickWorld Chicago in 2019. This was shortly after his Antique Fire Engine became available through the BrickLink AFOL Design Program. After congratulating him on this exciting news, I shared that I would never consider submitting a design because I would be competing against talented builders like him.
He immediately asked to see what I was displaying. What followed was one of the most enjoyable 45 minutes I’ve experienced as a LEGO builder. Boone took the time to provide very constructive feedback about my Micropolis City. More importantly, he spent a long time encouraging me to make a submission to the Design Program. His message was simple: take your favorite building and boil it down to what makes it unique, and then expand on that. It didn’t matter what other builders were submitting; I needed to send in a design that captured my unique style.
Fast forward to what has come to be known as the Klesh Challenge. I don’t think I was consciously aware of my conversation with Boone when I suggested shrinking the National Mall. The idea was to boil each building down as small as possible while still being recognizable. In hindsight, that was exactly what Boone had told me to do: keep only what is necessary and get rid of everything else. It’s probably too late to change the name to the Boone Challenge, but he certainly deserves credit as well.”
And this is why I love the LEGO community. The sharing of knowledge and experience, the mentorship passed from builder to builder, from AFOL to AFOL, makes us all better. See one, do one, teach one. It happens here, with LEGO.
One More Attempt
Just when I thought the challenge was behind me, something unexpected popped up in January 2022.
I was happy with my John Klesh Challenge version of the National Mall and had gone back to working on the big microscale version. But then I ran across this image on Flickr: “LEGO Microscale Village,” created by Klaus Hoffmeister in 2015.
And dang, I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. So here is the even smaller Hoffmeister-inspired version of the Mall. It’s smaller than a Subway foot-long sandwich, and although each individual building wouldn’t pass the Klesh Challenge recognizability test, as a whole it’s still clearly identifiable as the National Mall.
Looking back, the Klesh Challenge did far more than help me build smaller models. It taught me how to see the essential details, trust my instincts, and grow as both a designer and a builder. And it reminded me why I fell in love with this community in the first place. We don’t just build models; we build on each other’s ideas, encouragement, and generosity.
Whether it’s Boone inspiring John, John challenging me, or me passing that insight along to someone else, the chain continues. That spirit of mentorship is what keeps this LEGO community creative, connected, and thriving—the shared foundation beneath everything we build together.
Have you ever taken on a challenge from another builder that changed the way you build? Let us know in the comments below!
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