The SunSphere: A LEGO® creation by R H : MOCpages.com

The SunSphere

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We got no car! We got no money! And no one knows we’re here! We’re stranded! But on the plus side, I knocked over the SunSphere. Ha Ha!

About this creation

Wait! How about a fair? Not just a county fair, not just a Europe fair, but a World’s fair? The World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Keep reading.
The Hungarians have built a giant motorised Rubik’s cube, and the fair’s symbol is the Sunsphere, which sits atop a 266 foot tall steel shaft.
What’s inside?
An information desk.
Cooool!

The Sunsphere, in Knoxville, Tennessee, is an 81.07 m (266 ft) high hexagonal steel truss structure, topped with a 23 m (75 ft) gold-colored glass sphere that served as the symbol of the 1982 World's Fair.

Designed by the Knoxville architectural firm Community Tectonics, the Sunsphere was created as the theme structure for the 1982 World's Fair. It was noted for its unique design in several engineering publications. Most of the World's Fair site is now a public park and a convention center, but the Sunsphere remains.
In its original design, the sphere portion was to have had a diameter of 86.5 feet (26.4 m) to represent symbolically the 865,000-mile (1,392,000 km) diameter sun. The tower's window glass panels are layered in 24-karat gold dust and cut to seven different shapes. It weighs 600 tons and features six double steel truss columns in supporting the seven-story sphere. The tower has a volume of 203,689 cubic feet (5,767.8 m3) and a surface of 16,742 square feet (1,555.4 m2).

During the fair it cost $2 to take the elevator to its observation deck. The tower served as a restaurant and featured food items such as the Sunburger and a rum and fruit juice cocktail called the Sunburst.

The Sunsphere also featured in the March 1996 episode of the Simpsons ‘Bart on the Road’ in which Bart, using a fake ID, hires a car and promptly drives himself, Milhouse, Martin (or Milton) and Nelson to the ‘grammar rodeo in Canada’. The Sunsphere features as a rather fragile structure which topples when Nelson throws a rock at it.
The Lego Sunsphere is built at micro-scale and features a mock-up of the World Fair Logo and the edge of the river. All of the photographs here have been aged to make it look as though they had been taken 28 years ago.

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