Largest
house of cards - Bryan Berg sets world record
MACAU, China -- Bryan Berg, an American
architect, used 218,792 cards to create a replica of the Venetian
Macau, which is on display in its namesake luxury hotel and
casino and sets the new world record for the Largest
house of cards.
Berg took 44 days and 4,051 decks of cards
to complete his world's
Largest house of cards inside the Venetian, which
sits at the heart of Macau's Cotai Strip, the China-ruled
city's version of Las Vegas' neon alley.
Since Macau's casino sector liberalised
in 2002, a spate of Las Vegas style gaming giants have transformed
the once sleepy former Portuguese colony into the world's
biggest gaming hub.
Weighing 44 stone and measuring 33 feet
by just under 10 feet, the world's
Largest house of cards which consisted of cards stacked
without glue or tape, nearly collapsed several times.
No tape or glue can be used in card stacking
and to prove that Mr Berg has complied with the rules he will
publicly knock down his 10.5m-long (35ft) construction in
ten days time.
The cards used in the world record attempt,
if laid end to end, would stretch more than 17km (10 miles)
and weigh more than 227kg (500lb). No wonder he stepped away
very carefully.
'This has been the most ambitious
project I have undertaken to date,' Berg said.
'It's really like a real construction project
because you have to engineer every single adjacency and every
support that's supporting everything above,' he added.
'I was inspired to stack cards by my card-playing
grandfather; maybe I can inspire some visitors at The Venetian
Macao to try their hand at building their own structures.
'There couldn’t be a more fitting place
to build the world’s
largest house of cards than at the world’s largest
resort hotel,” he added.
Guinness World Records created a new
record for the largest
house of free-standing playing cards to recognise
a replica of Cinderella’s castle that Bryan Berg made for
Walt Disney World in 2004
Mr Berg first broke the Guinness world
record for the tallest
house of cards in 1992 at the age of 17, with a 4.67m
(14ft 6in) tower.