Using Legos, Utah father recreates Salt Lake City’s ‘pockets of culture’

In just three months, Philip Sadler has gained more than 6,000 followers on his relatively new @salt_lego_city Instagram account, where he posts Lego-brick recreations of Salt Lake City landmarks and businesses — from restaurants to bookstores to anything else a local would recognize.

“There are these amazing pockets of culture that exist on every block,” Sadler said. “I want to highlight these pockets so that people who associate with Utah can resonate with them, show them off to their friends and family to discuss them together in a light-hearted forum.”

Some of the “builds” Sadler, who grew up in Chicago, has designed so far include the downtown Salt Lake City library, the Gilgal Sculpture Garden and the Dee’s Family Restaurant sign in Sugar House.

Along with a few different photo angles and sometimes a sped-up video of the Lego bricks being digitally assembled, the posts often also include a nugget of background information, such as when a landmark was built, or a fun fact. Of the Dee’s sign, he wrote, “I use this sign for driving instructions more than I’d like to admit.”

A father of two, Sadler said he works with Lego because the building-block toys are almost universally recognizable and “evoke a sense of nostalgia.” His daughter Remy, 11, and son Jack, 2, both like playing with them.

“The inspiration for a lot of these creations [come from] my daughter,” Sadler said. “She definitely helps with ideas, and sometimes the builds themselves, and what direction to take them.”

A team effort

At first, Sadler focused more on creating broader downtown Salt Lake City landscapes, but almost immediately, his Instagram followers started requesting more specific landmarks such as the 9th and 9th Whale, the much-talked-about sculpture unveiled last year.

“[There’s] so much attention to detail; recreating the mural colors, road signs and even throwing in the gnomes,” said Stephen Kesler, artist of the piece formally known as “Out of the Blue,” of Sadler’s recreation.

The garden gnomes were inspired by early protests to the planned sculpture, when some anti-whale neighbors placed gnomes in the roundabout where it was eventually installed.

As Sadler’s follower count surged, the community only became a bigger part of the project — so much so that he made a survey people can fill out to request what Lego recreation they want to see next.

“I love that people interact with it by sending ideas,” Sadler said. “I feel like that adds a whole new dimension to designing these things to have that community aspect.”

Sadler uses a free computer-aided design platform called BrickLink Studio to make most of his builds. The platform replicates Lego bricks by exact size and color, making the design process similar to physically building his recreations. Instead, he’s able to work with an “infinite supply of every possible color and piece.”

“Lego is cost-prohibitive for most people, especially at the scale that I design typically, so I love the idea that you can become a Lego master without spending a dollar, theoretically,” he said.

Going forward, Sadler plans to convert more and more of his digital Lego creations to physical models so he’s able to display them around town. He also hopes for others to be able to contribute to the project by submitting their own Lego creations that he can then share with his followers.

Holding a ‘magnifying glass’ to Salt Lake City

Sadler started making digital Lego recreations just a few months before he began posting them. It’s become a way for him to more “fully grasp” the city.

“I live here, I love it and I just want to be a part of that culture more and more,” he said.

When Sadler decides on a place to recreate, he usually visits it first before trying to find out the story behind it, such as how long it’s existed and what struggles its owners or creators may have faced to keep it in place.

“And so it’s a way for me to put a magnifying glass on these important landmarks to the people of Salt Lake,” he said.

Dave Ammott, an architectural historian, loves the account because it gets people to pay attention to what makes Salt Lake City, well, Salt Lake City.

“Hopefully projects like this can lead in some way, shape or form to investing and getting people to appreciate the real things, so they stay around and the flavor of Salt Lake remains,” Ammott said.

Ammott said the idea of people recreating the world on a miniature scale is a tradition centuries old.

“It’s one way that we humans can perhaps understand the world and comprehend in all its complexity — reduce it and recreate it in our own way,” Ammott said.

Even if the recreations are small, Sadler hopes his followers can get a tiny endorphin boost from recognizing the places in his posts.

“I hope they take away an amplified sense of community,” he said, “like a slight bump in a sense of pride that the places they enjoy are enjoyed by many others here in Salt Lake.”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.