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The Story

"Hey, let's build the Sears Tower..." that's how this project got started. A few of my friends and I were sitting around drinking one night, and as the beer cans started amassing, we got an idea to build something with them. At first, we were going to do an American flag, but that proved too hard, as the right color cans were hard to come by. But then it dawned on us that the Sears Tower, located about a mile away from us should be memorialized in beer can form. 556 MGDs later, a scale model of the tallest building in the world came to be. Originally designed by Bruce Graham, and engineered by Fazlur Kahn, both SOM partners; it rises nearly 1,500 feet above the street below, topping out at 110 floors. It was completed in 1974, beating out the World Trade Center towers for the tallest building in both the United States and the world.

Our version only stands about 8 feet tall. 556 cans equates to 52 gallons, or around 3 and a quarter kegs worth of beer. We rinsed all the cans, and de-tabbed them all, except for the ones which tops would be seen, where the "tubes" of the building drop off, leaving two that extend to the very top. The entire thing is hot-glued together, and comes apart in 5 different sections. It is displayed prominently in the living room, and visitors never forget to compliment us on a job well done.

Construction

Building the real Sears Tower took many years. Assembling our Sears Tower took an evening to do, and the acquirement and "drainage" of the cans took less than two semesters. We started out with a square piece of plywood that we found on the back porch of our apartment building. We then set up a squaring tool and began gluing cans. After the bottom of the tower was completed, we ran out of hot glue sticks, and had to run to a 24-hour Home Depot to buy more.