Watch 100,000 Dominoes Topple to the Ground in a Dazzling Eight-Minute Display

After an arduous ten days of lining up 100,000 tiles side by side, 25-year-old artist Lily Hevesh and a team of nine international builders completed a massive—and fragile—domino installation at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Then, on July 20, it was time to knock it down.

“Oh my god, I’m so excited,” said an announcer seconds before the destruction of the 50-by-50-foot tiled trail, per a Washingtonian video. “We get to count down. Are you ready?”

Over 100,000 Dominos Fall in the National Building Museum

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Two kids lined up and pushed over the first piece, setting off a satisfying cascade of colorful blocks. The installation took over eight minutes to topple.

Hevesh is a domino artist-in-residence at the museum. She has been building impressive domino structures and posting them to her YouTube channel since she was 10 years old. As her work has become increasingly elaborate, she has amassed over 1.8 million views.

The exhibition, “Destination Domino,” did not involve traditional blocks with dotted patterns. Instead, Hevesh used her own brightly colored dominoes, a brand called H5, to form elaborate artistic creations. The artist set up patterns, spirals, letters and even a domino recreation of the Mona Lisa.

“Typical dominoes usually have dots and they’re more rounded, so they’re not good for the building of structures,” Hevesh tells WTOP’s Jason Fraley. “H5 domino creations are more precise, so they’re perfect two-by-one ratios, and every single domino is alike, so you can build them super tall. They come in all different colors, no dots, and we have a special surface texture so when they topple over they’re not gonna slide out like a lot of game dominoes will.”

During the construction phase, the museum allowed visitors to watch as the team set up the blocks. Hevesh tells the Washington Post’s Sofia Andrade that the building process was both relaxing and stress-inducing.

“It definitely goes from super meditative—like, I’m in my own zone—and really relaxed, to the other end of the scale where I’m like, ‘I’m so nervous right now, I really hope I don’t drop a domino,’” she says.

In addition to the ephemeral 100,000-piece work, the “Destination Domino” team has also broken a record for the world’s tallest domino tower, measuring just over 33 feet high. The builders modeled the tower after the museum’s columns. Representatives from Guinness World Records were present to confirm the achievement.

There were two minor hiccups during the topple, as a few of the dominoes did not end up hitting their targets, according to Washingtonian’s Omega Ilijevich. In both cases, a team member was nearby to rectify the situation and restart the process.

At the end of the trail was a large sign made from tiles that read “Destination Domino.” When the final pieces reached it, the sign shattered apart and blocks poured down onto the ground.

“It’s more than just a spectacle,” says Aileen Fuchs, the museum’s executive director, in a statement. “It’s an invitation to explore, learn and be inspired by the limitless possibilities of domino art.”

As with any good domino topple, all that was left to do when the mesmerizing sequence ended was clean up.

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.