At the National Building Museum, a team of builders are stacking dominoes into a 34-foot tower. The person behind this elaborate, colorful pillar is Lily Hevesh, known as Hevesh5 on her popular YouTube channel. Hevesh is major practitioner of “domino art,” and as a part of her two-week residency at the DC museum, she’s attempting to surpass the world record for tallest domino structure, which currently stands at 33 feet. “The museum is absolutely beautiful, and it’s really not often that I get a chance to build in a place with such high ceilings and such an open area,” Hevesh says. “This is one of the only places we could really go to beat this record.”
A New Hampshire native, Hevesh got interested in dominos after receiving a 28-piece set as a gift from her grandparents when she was 9. “I really loved watching them fall,” she says. “It was just so satisfying. I like that you can build them into any structure you want and they always have a purpose: to fall down.” Intrigued, she decided to look up “dominoes” on YouTube and discovered a whole community of domino enthusiasts sharing tricks. She soon began posting her own domino clips to the site, progressing from simple arrangements to huge, kinetic arrangements. On her channel now, you’ll find complicated displays (like 15,000-domino spirals and photo-real portraits of Taylor Swift) that have amassed over a billion views and gotten her 4 million subscribers. Her work has landed her a collaboration with The Tonight Show, a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and a documentary called Lily Topples the World.
National Building Museum president Aileen Fuchs decided to bring in Hevesh as an artist in residence after receiving a tip from a trusted source: “Her kids are big fans of dominos,” says Hevesh. “And the museum seemed like a perfect fit for me. It’s focused on architecture, design, and engineering, and that’s everything that we’re doing with domino art.”
Her grand finale at the museum will come on Saturday, July 20th, when she’ll topple a sequence of more than 100,000 tiles in the museum’s West Court, which is expected to take about 8 minutes. “As we were planning the topple, I just wanted to make the whole thing look as artistically beautiful as possible, using the coolest effects that we can to show off the beauty of domino art,” says Hevesh. “In one area, for example, we have a giant fall wall—which is like a big wooden board full of steps—in the shape of Mona Lisa.”
While constructing gravity-defying structures, Hevesh is also finding time to mentor young builders in sold-out series of workshops. “It’s always such a great experience working with kids because I think dominoes can give them a real opportunity to get off their computers or iPads and work with their hands,” she says. In her experience, domino arrangements can subtly teach children about some hard skills like geometry and physics while also offering intangible life lessons: “I’ve seen kids become more patient from building with dominoes. Over time, they learn that if a domino structure falls over unexpectedly or doesn’t turn out right, it’s all a part of the process. They pick up the dominoes and try again.”
Destination Domino runs July 11th–20th at the National Building Museum. Programming includes hands-on domino activities for kids and daily screenings of Lily Topples the World. Hevesh’s live domino topple initially sold out, but the museum has added some additional free tickets. Videos of the topple will be posted on Hevesh’s channel after the event.
