If you want to build a scale model of the Empire State Building, you can find architectural drawings online in about thirty seconds. The Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, the Chrysler Building — there are published plans, cross-sections, elevation drawings, and CAD files available for nearly every iconic structure in the world. Architectural firms publish them. Universities archive them. Enthusiasts share them.
The IMS Pagoda has none of that. No floor plans exist in any publicly available source I have been able to find. No architectural cross-sections. No elevation drawings with measurements. No published CAD files. Nothing. The building was completed in 2000 by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and whatever architectural documentation exists lives in the private archives of the Speedway and the design firm that built it. For a LEGO builder working from a home office in Central Florida, those archives might as well be on the moon.
That means everything in this build — every floor dimension, every canopy depth, every setback measurement, every window spacing — has been reverse-engineered from visual sources. Photographs. Video. Memory. The process of building a reference library capable of supporting that level of reverse-engineering became a project within the project, and it is one of the most time-consuming things I have done.
The reference library for this project currently contains more than 150 photographs of the IMS Pagoda, collected from multiple sources over the course of the design phase. These are not 150 random snapshots. Each image was saved for a specific reason, and each one is catalogued by what architectural detail it reveals.
The sources break down into several categories:
IMS official photography. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway publishes high-resolution photographs through its media channels, social media accounts, and official website. These are professionally shot images — sharp, well-lit, and often taken from angles that are inaccessible to the general public. Press-level photography from the Pagoda's upper levels, aerial shots during race weekends, and carefully composed promotional images. These are the backbone of the reference library because the image quality allows pixel-level measurement against known-size objects in the frame.
Race broadcast stills. Television coverage of the Indianapolis 500 and other IMS events includes helicopter flyovers, rooftop camera angles, and establishing shots that show the Pagoda from perspectives no ground-level photographer can achieve. Screenshotting broadcast footage provides reference angles that are impossible to get any other way — particularly the rear facade and the upper floor details that are obscured from ground level by the canopy overhangs.
Fan photography. The LEGO and motorsport communities overlap in ways that have been genuinely helpful. Fan photographs from race weekends, museum visits, and IMS tours capture casual angles that professional photography often skips — the side of the building that faces away from the track, ground-level shots looking straight up at the canopy undersides, close-ups of the bleacher section that show individual structural details.
My own 26 years of attendance photos. I have been going to the Indianapolis 500 for 26 consecutive years. Over those years, I have taken hundreds of photographs at the Speedway, many of which include the Pagoda in the background or foreground. These photos span different cameras, different lighting conditions, and different vantage points across more than two decades. Some of the most useful reference images in the library came from my own collection — shots I took years ago with no idea that I would eventually be using them to measure window spacing in a LEGO model.
When you have zero floor plans, your reference photo library is your floor plan. Every image is a data source. Every angle reveals something the others miss. The goal is not to collect photos — it's to collect information.
Still photographs have a fundamental limitation: they capture a single angle at a single moment. For most of the Pagoda's exterior features, multiple still photos from different angles provide enough information to establish dimensions and proportions. But for interior details — corridor layouts, elevator locations, room configurations, the view from inside the glass facade — still photographs are almost useless. The interior of the IMS Pagoda is not a place where photographers are typically allowed to wander freely.
Video sources solve this problem. The IMS Behind the Bricks series, produced by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, includes episodes that go inside the Pagoda. Camera crews walk through corridors, ride elevators, enter control rooms, and film from the upper floor observation areas. These videos contain architectural information that exists in no still photograph I have ever found.
The process for extracting reference material from video is methodical. I watch the footage at normal speed first to understand the spatial layout — which direction the camera moves, where the corridors lead, how the rooms connect. Then I go back through frame by frame, pausing at moments that reveal specific architectural details. A doorframe visible for half a second tells me the ceiling height on that floor. A glimpse down a corridor through an open door tells me the depth of the building at that level. The reflection in a window shows me what the opposite facade looks like from an angle I cannot photograph from the ground.
Each useful frame gets screenshotted, saved to the reference folder, and catalogued with a note describing what it reveals. "Floor 7 corridor, east side, ceiling visible — confirms drop ceiling approximately 8 feet." "Elevator lobby, floor 3, looking south — window count on south facade is 6." "Rooftop observation area, looking down — railing height relative to person standing nearby."
The Behind the Bricks series was not produced for LEGO builders. It was produced for motorsport fans who want to see what happens behind the scenes at the Speedway. But for someone trying to reverse-engineer the building's interior layout, these videos are invaluable. They provide the only source of interior spatial information that I have been able to find outside of physically visiting the building and taking measurements myself.
Beyond the IMS official series, race-weekend vlogs, media tour footage, and drone flyover videos from various YouTube creators have all contributed frames to the reference library. Any video that shows the Pagoda from an uncommon angle is worth watching. Most of the time, a thirty-minute video yields one or two usable screenshots. Occasionally, a single video provides a dozen reference frames that reshape my understanding of an entire floor's layout.
Some parts of the IMS Pagoda are extraordinarily difficult to photograph from publicly accessible locations. Understanding which angles are hard to capture — and finding workarounds — has been one of the most challenging aspects of building the reference library.
The rear facade. The Pagoda's front face overlooks the start/finish straight and is photographed constantly. The rear of the building faces away from the track and toward the infield infrastructure. It is not a glamorous angle. Photographers rarely shoot it intentionally, and when it appears in images, it is usually partially obscured by other structures, vehicles, or event infrastructure. Establishing the rear facade's window layout, structural details, and any differences from the front face required dedicated searches through broadcast footage and aerial photography.
Upper floor details. From ground level, the upper floors of an 11-story building are viewed at a steep angle. The canopy overhangs on each floor partially obscure the floor above from a ground-level observer. Details like window framing, signage, and facade materials on floors seven through eleven are essentially invisible from the standard spectator vantage point. Aerial photography and broadcast helicopter footage are the primary sources for upper floor detail.
The rooftop. The Pagoda's rooftop — including the observation deck, railings, flagpole bases, and mechanical equipment — is visible only from above or from the building itself. Drone footage and helicopter broadcast shots are the only reliable sources. Even these tend to be brief, passing shots that require frame-by-frame analysis to extract useful detail.
Canopy undersides. The underside of each canopy overhang contains structural details — lighting fixtures, support structures, surface materials — that are visible only when standing directly below the building and looking up. My own attendance photos from race weekends include several shots taken from this perspective, and they have proven to be some of the most useful images in the entire library for establishing canopy construction details.
One of the surprises of building a reference library was discovering how much the lighting conditions in a photograph affect what architectural details are visible. The same face of the same building can reveal completely different information depending on when the photo was taken.
Harsh midday sun creates deep shadows under each canopy overhang. These shadows are visually dramatic, but they also precisely delineate the depth of each overhang and the vertical spacing between floors. Shadow lines are straight, measurable edges. In multiple reference photos, I have used shadow geometry to calculate canopy depths that would be impossible to measure from the photo alone.
Overcast conditions eliminate shadows but reveal color. The Pagoda's exterior surfaces include white panels, glass with varying tint levels, gray structural elements, and metallic finishes. Under overcast skies, these materials are visible at their truest colors without the distortion that direct sunlight introduces. Color-matching between the real building and LEGO brick colors — already an imprecise process — is most reliable when done against overcast reference photos.
Sunrise and sunset create low-angle light that interacts with the glass facades in ways that no other lighting condition replicates. The glass panels on the real Pagoda shift between transparent and reflective depending on the angle of the sun. At certain times of day, you can see straight through the glass into the interior. At other times, the glass reflects the sky like a mirror. These transitional moments reveal the glass thickness, the tint color, and the framing structure behind the panels — all of which inform the LEGO model's transparent element choices.
Night photography from race weekends shows the Pagoda illuminated from within. Interior lighting reveals floor-by-floor room layouts, corridor locations, and the relative brightness of different areas — all of which hint at the building's functional layout. A brightly lit floor is a working space. A dimly lit floor might be mechanical or storage. These clues, combined with the video reference material, help fill in the gaps that daytime exterior photography cannot address.
No single photograph can establish a measurement with confidence. Lens distortion, perspective compression, unknown camera distance, and image resolution all introduce uncertainty. The process I use for establishing dimensions is built on cross-referencing multiple photographs of the same feature to arrive at a consensus measurement.
The method works like this. I identify a feature I need to measure — say, the width of the ground floor's front face. I pull every photograph in the library that shows that feature. For each photograph, I identify a known-size reference object in the same frame — a person, a car, a standard-width door, a flag at a known distance. I use that reference to calculate a pixel-to-feet ratio for the photograph. Then I apply that ratio to measure the target feature.
Each photograph produces a slightly different measurement. Lens distortion might stretch the building 3% wider in one shot. Perspective angle might compress it 5% shorter in another. But across ten or fifteen photographs, the measurements cluster around a central value. That cluster center becomes the consensus dimension — the number I use in the LEGO design.
The 3D reference model built in Three.js serves as a bridge between the photo-derived measurements and the LEGO design. The Three.js model captures the building's overall massing, setback ratios, and canopy proportions at a level of precision that is easier to work with than a spreadsheet full of individual measurements. When I design a floor in Stud.io, I compare the LEGO model's proportions against the Three.js model's proportions rather than against raw numbers. The Three.js model has already absorbed and reconciled the measurement uncertainties — it represents the best available understanding of the building's geometry.
The IMS Pagoda was completed in 2000. It is now 2026. Over that quarter-century, the building has changed. Not structurally — the architecture remains the same — but in the details that reference photographs capture.
Signage has been added, removed, and replaced. LED displays that did not exist in 2000 now wrap portions of the facade. Sponsor branding changes annually. The surrounding structures — the Yard of Bricks, the grandstands, the scoring pylon — have been modified in ways that affect sightlines and reference angles. Even the landscaping around the base of the Pagoda has changed over the years.
When working with reference photos from different years, these changes need to be reconciled. A photograph from 2005 might show a facade detail clearly but include signage that no longer exists. A photograph from 2023 might show the current state of the building but with a new LED panel obscuring a structural detail that a 2005 photo captured perfectly. The reference library is not a snapshot of the building at one moment — it is a composite view assembled from 25 years of visual data.
The LEGO model captures the Pagoda as it exists today, not as it existed in 2000. Current signage, current lighting, current facade treatments. But the structural geometry — floor heights, setback depths, canopy overhangs — comes from whichever photos show those features most clearly, regardless of when they were taken. The building's bones have not changed. Only its skin has.
150+ photos from 25 years of the building's life. Different cameras, different angles, different lighting. Every photo is a data point. The consensus of all of them is closer to truth than any single image could ever be.
The reference library provides the information. The Three.js model provides the massing. But the actual LEGO model is built in Stud.io — BrickLink's digital design tool that I learned from scratch specifically for this project.
In Part 7: Learning Stud.io, I cover the experience of picking up a completely unfamiliar piece of software and using it to design a museum-quality MOC. The learning curve, the frustrations, the moments where the software reshaped how I thought about the design, and practical tips for anyone considering Stud.io for their first serious MOC project.