Bryan Berg: the acknowledged innovator of card stacking on the grand scale

Architect Bryan Berg spends much of his life building houses. But his gravity defying, world record breaking structures could come crashing down at any moment - as with any house of cards.

Berg, the Guinness World Record-honored "Cardstacker," has devoted his career to building houses of playing cards - and famous landmarks including the Empire State Building and the US Capitol Building too. He travels across the United States putting on shows in which he builds seemingly impossible structures out of ordinary playing cards. He does not use glue, tape or any other tricks to keep these card houses standing. That is what makes Berg's creations so jaw-dropping when people see them. He's developed techniques that result in very stable structures, and, for skeptics especially, at the end of the exhibits he turns a leaf-blower onto his creations and everything comes crumbling down.

Berg says he builds his card houses using a very methodical system. He visualizes the structure and builds it using a type of repetitive geometry that resembles a honeycomb. Berg doesn't keep his card-stacking methods a secret. He has revealed his techniques in a book, "Stacking the Deck: Secrets of the World's Master Card Architect." Berg broke the Guinness World Record for the World's Tallest House of Freestanding Playing Cards in 1992 at the age of seventeen, with a tower fourteen feet, six inches tall. He has been commissioned to break his own record more than ten times.  His latest structure in the category is over twenty-five feet tall.

In 2004, Guinness created a new record category for the World's Largest House of Cards to further recognize Berg's work. He continues to hold both records, which require that the builder use no tape, glue, or tricks in his constructions. Touring regularly, Berg has stacked cards in virtually every major US and Canadian city, Europe, and Asia. Berg was first inspired by his card-player grandfather to begin stacking cards, and is entirely self-taught in all of the techniques he uses today. Berg holds a Professional Degree in Architecture from Iowa State University, where he also served as faculty.  He earned his Masters Degree in Design Studies from Harvard University.

Berg's creations also inspired the GX front cover design this month.

His next project will see him attempt to break his own Guinness World Record for the largest house of freestanding playing cards at The Venetian Macao. He begins January 26 and will work until March 10, using over 190,000 cards.

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