World-renowned card-tower builder and Iowa State student Bryan Berg said his unique hobby all started with a deck of cards and a seat on his grandpa’s lap.

“My grandpa really got me interested in building with cards,” Berg said. “I used to sit on his lap while he played cards, and sometimes we would build card houses together.” Berg said he started with one deck and now has more than 1,000 decks in his collection.

A fifth-year architecture student, Berg is building a card tower in the Design Center for Veishea Week’s Design Day. The finished tower, which is not a record-breaker, will be about 8-feet tall with 70 decks of cards. It will be on display in the College of Design Dean’s Office this week, said Dean Mark Engelbrecht.

Berg, who is from Spirit Lake, first broke the world record for the tallest card tower in 1992 when he used 208 decks of cards to build a tower that stood 14-feet, 6-inches and weighed 28 pounds. He has since topped his own record five times.

His most recent record-breaker was last month in Washington, D.C. The 654-deck, 102-story card tower stood 19-feet, 6 1/2-inches and weighed 100 pounds. It hasn’t been officially entered into the Guinness Book of World Records yet.

“People always ask if they topple over easily,” Berg said. “Most people don’t realize how much they weigh.”

Berg said that to flatten his towers, leaf blowers are needed on the base because there is so much pressure on the cards. The towers “fall like a tree.”

Each major card creation takes between 60 and 80 hours over a six-to-eight day period to finish, Berg said.

“They sometimes look unbelievable,” Berg said. “But I use no tape, no adhesive, and I don’t fold or crease the cards. I take them straight out of the box.”

Engelbrecht said the Student Design Council, made up of representatives from all disciplines within the college, chose Berg to build the tower for Design Day because of his great reputation. “Bryan has a unique international reputation,” Engelbrecht said.

Berg’s talent has taken him all over the world. And his cards aren’t limited to towers. He made an oriental shrine in Tokyo that was shown on national television, and he built a tower at the Ripley’s Believe it of Not Museum in Copenhagen, Germany.

The shrine was a challenge because it was made on a platform that had to be carefully moved about 300 feet every day from one studio to another, Berg said.

Berg said all of his cards are donated. He uses Play-Mor brand.

“They are made of the thinnest paper, the least gloss, and are quite small,” he said. “When I am going somewhere to build, I just call their marketing director, and he sends me all I need for free.”

Berg said a lot goes into planning for a card sculpture.

He said he can’t build where there is too much sun because it’s bad for the cards. It doesn’t work to build on carpet, and round-the-clock security is a must.

“In Philadelphia, I was behind a barricade and people would still throw things at the sculpture. One guy even came and screamed in my face and security had to take him away,” he said.

There is no limit to the height of a tower, Berg said. But for every foot high, Berg needs to add an inch in diameter to the base of his towers.

“The only real limit is that I can only reach in so far to build,” he said. “If I wanted to build a 100-foot tower, I would have to build it hollow and be lowered inside to build it up.”

Berg said that card-tower building pays for a good part of his college tuition, but even when he doesn’t get paid, “the perks like free trips are great.”