A house fit for kings, queens... and aces: Meet the world's best card-stacker, who has spent 30 years perfecting his art

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Standing tall: Mr Berg stands proudly beside his world record 26ft tall tower of the Dallas skyline, which he built in 2006


These buildings are fit for royalty - well, the two-intentional kind.

The incredibly intricate and delicate creations are the handiwork of Brian Berg, who claims to be the world's best card-stacker and has built a number of breath-taking card constructions.

Iowa-based Berg cut his first deck of cards aged only eight, and now he holds the world record having built a 26ft tall stack in Dallas, Texas, for which he used an amazing 1,060 decks.


Fit for a princess: The 37-year-old created this Cinderella's Castle at Walt Disney World during 2004 in Orlando, Florida


The 37-year-old has duplicated the New York skyline, Cinderella's Castle and many other of the world's most recognisable landmarks.

'Cards are my form of architecture,' he said. 'Most of the time my structures do not collapse.

'Because of the structural geometry and all the weight of the cards, they are very strong and stable.'


Builder at work: The Iowa-based artist first picked up a pack of cards aged eight and has been fascinated ever since


Mr Berg has perfected his art for almost 30 years, and having trained as a professional architect at Harvard, he has broken his own Guinness card-stacking records a dozen times over his career.

His largest work - a card recreation of the Venetian Macau Resort-Hotel - broke his own world record by using 4,000 decks or an amazing 219,000 individual cards, placed on top of each other over a period of 44 days.

'I have many techniques that I use to build my structures from standard commercially available decks of cards,' he explained.

'I'm never just randomly placing cards, I'm always following a set technique for a certain visual or structural goal.


What goes up ... Mr Berg can allows his Dallas skyline to tumble down - and important part of the process, he insists


'All the cards are placed at right angles in such a way as to brace each other from falling over or bending under a load.

'It's important to note that all my structures are free-standing.
'There is no means of support or sticking the cards together.'

But what goes up must eventually come down - and Mr Berg accepts the temporary nature of his spectacular houses of cards.

'I also enjoy knocking the structures down because I consider the demolition of each project part of the creative process,' he said.

'My favourite method of destruction is a leaf blower because you can really control the wind, where it hits, and the damage it does.

'It's great fun, and really interesting to watch tall towers sway in the wind - to see walls or columns collapse from a huge burst of air or from impact from some other portion collapsing.

'A great deal about physics can be learned by watching the demolition process.
'I've learned just as much by knocking cards down as I have by building them up.'




source: dailymail