When we build with LEGO, we often find ourselves indoors away from the sunshine and the beautiful outdoors for many hours or days. What happens when we manage to get outside and explore a bit? We go back inside and try to capture that beauty with our favorite plastic interlocking brick system! Here’s how RebelLUG, an online LEGO User Group, put that beauty into bricks.

National Parks at BrickWorld Chicago 2025

The Great Outdoors Is Calling

As with most collaborations, this one started with a simple idea. What if we made a series of MOCs showcasing the many National Parks found in the United States (and Canada)? I chatted with Drew, the idea originator, about his inspiration for this project, and Paul, who helped flesh out the idea to its final form.

Chris: Thanks for taking the time to chat about this collab! Where did the idea for a National Parks collaboration come from?

Drew: My family and I try to visit a new national park every few years, and I always look forward to those trips the most. In the spring of 2023, my mom asked me if I had ever seen any national park MOCs before. I hadn’t, and we both agreed it would be cool if RebelLUG did a collaboration around that idea. I thought it would lend itself really well to a collaborative display. Each builder would only be expected to build something small, and, if they’ve visited the park they’re building, the MOC would have a personal connection to them.

Chris: Did you have an idea of what direction you expected the collab to go when you originally pitched it, or did you want to leave it open-ended and draw on the creativity of the group to help shape the idea?

Drew: The original idea I pitched was to do a national park collaboration consisting of 16x16 vignettes of each park. The end result stayed true to this idea, but the execution of it was expanded upon by Paul, who designed a really great stackable cube design that allowed the collaboration to be a more cohesive display. As a group, we also worked to develop a uniform styling, including bright colors and sky gradients.

Beginnings of a Collaboration

For a collaboration, a solid idea with a brief pitch as to how it might be implemented is all that’s needed to get the ball rolling, and in true collaborative fashion, others in the group usually take an interest and further refine the idea. Paul did a great job of this. Let’s chat with him!

Chris: What initially drew your attention regarding this collaboration idea?

Paul: I love spending time in nature and have visited many national parks across the country. It was also an accessible collaboration, as people could build one or more standalone cubes and connect them together at the convention without needing to be there in person.

Chris: Where did the idea for the standard cube come from?

Paul: The inspiration for the standard cube was threefold. The first was national park artwork. The national parks have a stunning design language that bridges across numerous artists and products. These designs often feature simplified interpretations of key landmarks and exaggerated, stylized colors.

I was also particularly inspired by the work of Alex Eiman, who has designed a set of national park badges that he sells as stickers. Many of these badges take the shape of a hexagon, which is reminiscent of a cube seen from one corner, inspiring the shape of each diorama.

Additionally, the shape being three walls of a cube, is also inspired by the minifigure habitat. While differing in connection style and scale, they could be presented in a familiar stackable display that could be adapted to any number of national parks.

Looking at the design, many national park designs, including those by Alex Eiman, feature gradients that pop against a white border, so our third piece of inspiration was the stepped gradient technique used by Jan Woźnica in his Tales of the Space Age Ideas set. For optimal contrast, we used a white one stud wide border with rounded corners reminiscent of Eiman's badges.

My first sketch model that I pitched to RebelLUG was directly based off Eiman's Yosemite badge. This was 12x12, but the final scale was increased to 16x16 to allow for more detail.

Chris: Wonderful! Your sketch build does a great job of capturing the style of Alex’s badge!

Thank you both for taking the time to walk us through the creation of this collab!

The Parks and the People

The collaboration consisted of five RebelLUG members displaying seven parks at Brickworld Chicago 2025: Drew and Paul with the addition of Nannan, Daniel, and myself. I chatted with each of them.

Chris: Which park(s) did you choose to build and why?

Drew: I built Grand Teton National Park and Badlands National Park. These were the first two national parks I ever visited, so I thought they made the most sense to be the ones I built. I displayed them both at Brickworld Chicago 2024, anticipating that other builders were also bringing some parks.

While the parks from those other builders fell through at the time, I was still fortunate enough to be nominated for best use of color. This year, we had several additional parks from other builders. The current collaboration won “Best Use of Color” so it felt very full circle to come through with a win!

Paul: I grew up in California’s central valley and have been to Yosemite many times. The scene depicted in Eiman's badge, Tunnel View, is one of the park's most iconic vantage points.

Nannan: I chose to build the Grand Canyon because it's an iconic and easily recognizable location. I remember seeing it for the first time as a kid and it was a very breathtaking sight.

Daniel: I built Banff National Park, which is in Alberta Canada. I wanted to build a National Park that I had been to, since it would be more meaningful to build. The only National Park in the US I have been to was Mount Rainier in Washington. Another LUG member was already doing Mount Rainier, so as the only Canadian in the collab I did my favourite Canadian National Park. I was born in Alberta, but didn't grow up there. I went to Banff for the "first time" as an Adult in 2021.

Representing the Pacific Northwest

For my additions to the collab, I chose to build Mount Rainier and North Cascades National Parks. These are both from my home state of Washington. Mount Rainier was the first park I ever visited, camping there with my family as a kid.

North Cascades has become special since I now live just an hour away from the location I depicted in my build, Diablo Lake. I was able to take my rendition of the North Cascades park to the location it depicts, the stunning Diablo Lake.

I plan to complete the Washington State Parks by building the third one, Olympic National Park, in the near future.

A Special Challenge

Even after all the effort Paul gave to the collaboration, his build almost didn’t make it! I’ll let him explain what happened.

Paul: The most challenging part about this build was that I wasn’t at the convention where it was to be displayed! Unfortunately, I have yet to make it to Brickworld Chicago, but I needed to get the model there to join the rest of the collaboration. I designed the model digitally in Bricklink Studio and didn’t have all of the parts in my collection, so I ordered nearly all of the parts from LEGO’s Pick-a-Brick service and the remaining pieces were supplied by other RebelLUG members.

I shipped the parts directly to the hotel, and a group of RebelLUG members teamed up to assemble the model using building instructions I made for them. Thankfully, it all came together and my Yosemite design got to be displayed alongside its fellow National Parks!

More Parks To Come?

As you might have noticed, we only covered six of the 63 United States National Parks and one of the 37 Canadian parks. There is plenty more to be explored! I expect that more parks will be created and displayed at future conventions. So if you haven’t visited a national park lately, consider planning a trip. The inspiration you’ll find in the wild might just spark a LEGO collab.

Thanks to Drew for the great idea, to Paul for the brilliant standard cube, and to everyone who’s built for the collab so far. And a special shout-out to Eann for printing the names out for the parks (even though I thought your “cut here” lines were a cool border and left them on the stickers, whoops)!

What National Park would you want to build? Let us know in the comments below.

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