Watch 100,000 Dominoes Fall to the Ground in a Thrilling Display

Watch 100,000 Dominoes Topple Over in This Mesmerizing Record-Breaking Installation

By Regina Sienra on August 6, 2024

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Una publicación compartida por National Building Museum (@nationalbuildingmuseum)

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Dominoes are one of the most easily entertaining games out there, but they can also be used as creative tools. Just ask artist Lily Hevesh, also known as Hevesh5. The YouTuber and domino artist creates large-scale installations with thousands of dominoes, often sharing the process on her YouTube channel. Once set, they come alive by being tumbled to the ground with one stroke, revealing patterns and images in each thrilling display.

In one of her most daring works to date, Hevesh and her team built an installation featuring 100,000 pieces at Washington's National Building Museum, where Hevesh is a domino artist-in-residence. The mammoth work was part of her Destination Domino event, which had its climatic moment on July 20, when hundreds of visitors gathered for the toppling.

The eight-minute event was captured on video by Washingtonian, including the moment two little kids push the first piece to topple the 50-square-foot tiled trail. Soon, a dozen patterns, including the Washington D.C. skyline, the Metro map, the Mona Lisa, and a flower-like structure came down in a matter of seconds—despite two hiccups that were quickly fixed by Hevesh's team.

One of the secrets to Hevesh's alluring installations lies in the dominoes themselves. Instead of using traditional black-and-white dominoes, Hevesh used her own brand of brightly colored tiles, called H5 Domino Creations, which help her create her signature bright works. “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,” Hevesh explained to WTOP.

“It’s more than just a spectacle,” says Aileen Fuchs, the museum’s executive director. “It’s an invitation to explore, learn and be inspired by the limitless possibilities of domino art.” Through this event, Hevesh also broke the Guinness World Record for the tallest domino structure. The part of the installation that achieved this was a tower made of 10,442 dominoes that measured 10.128 meters tall (approximately 33 feet 3 inches).

You can watch the thrilling topple of Destination Domino below.