Athena Leong, who lives in Singapore, and Sevy Swift, who lives in the U.S., built an entire world map out of Lego in 4 hours, 59 minutes and 51 seconds — fast enough to set a new Guinness World Records title for the fastest time to build the Lego World Map as a two-person team, according to Guinness World Records' own account of the attempt.
The set itself is a piece of Lego trivia in its own right: at 11,695 pieces, the Lego Art World Map is the highest-piece-count set the company has ever released. Leong and Swift took it on April 12 at Brick by Brick Toys in Hayward, Calif., organizing every piece by color before they started so they could work through whole continents at once rather than hunting for individual bricks.
"We realized one color at a time actually speeds you up a lot because the colors are already there."
— Athena Leong
Swift, for his part, said he hadn't expected to clear the five-hour mark:
"I feel good! We got sub-five hours; I was not expecting that."
— Sevy Swift
Their time comfortably beat Guinness's five-and-a-half-hour minimum threshold for the team category, and outpaced the time set by the previous record holder — a solo build of 7 hours, 9 minutes and 41 seconds by Australia's Clarry Farkash in 2023 — even though Leong and Swift were splitting the work rather than racing it alone. Guinness didn't formally publish the pair's record until this week, roughly five months after the attempt, a common lag for adjudicated titles that require photo and video verification before they're made official.
Swift described the appeal in terms familiar to anyone who has ever dumped a bucket of bricks on the floor: a chance to revisit a childhood pastime with an adult's follow-through. Brick by Brick Toys co-owner Mike Marinakis, who hosted the attempt, said he hadn't seen anything quite like it in his store before, calling it "pretty cool and not something I would have expected."
