I've built hundreds of card projects and never attempted anything like this.
It's very windy
*thunder sound*
Yeah, look at that breeze
My name is Brian Berg I live in Santa Fe New Mexico
and I guess I'm a professional card stacker.
I grew up on a farm in northwest Iowa.
My grandfather was a bit of a card player and so between card games
my grandmother would be you know filling drinks
and my grandfather would be building some little house of cards.
and so I saw that and obviously had quite an impact.
So I would say I started around age 8
and the first time I captured a Guinness record
I was in high school.
It was the world's tallest house of cards and the record to beat was
12 feet six inches and I built something 14 feet six inches tall.
And then over the years I built many many more of them.
Largest house of cards. 3,000 decks the first time,
4000 decks the next time and I think today the tallest
And I think today the tallest one I ever built is 26 feet tall.
Which is by no means a limit it's just how high the ceiling was.
My real background is architecture I have a bachelor's degree
and a master's degree. People think that's why I can stack cards but
you know it's not. You learned to stack cards by stacking cards.
You know I avoid talking to people about it they don't know because
try to explain to somebody that you're a card stacker.
They're probably gonna just change the subject cause they're gonna think you're nuts.
One thing that's a continuity and all my work is; it's always inside,
it's always gotta be a certain thing,
it's always got to be done by a certain time,
and it's got to be perfect.
So one thing I've never done but I've always kind of wanted to do
is to try to build something really big outside.
Which is sort of an insane idea to begin with for all kinds of reasons.
There's the wind, there's the rain, there's skunks.
And so I'm thinking in its own very cool way it'll be the Coolest Thing I've Ever Made.
So some of the techniques I'll be using when I build are
most notably what I would call the grid.
It starts out with this four card cell.
and basically you're putting all these cards together
in a way that creates all these little boxes.
and the cards kind of reinforce each other.
This is the technique that I use when I'm teaching little kids to do this because
it's arguably the easiest but it's also the most important because every other
technique is kind of based on this one.
Now another technique that I do a lot of is this little pillar
and it's the same technique as before except the cards are vertical
and I'm just doing these first four cards like a little column with a hat
and it's kind of surprising you know how many of these you can build one on top of another.
This is why it's gonna be a huge challenge to try to do this outside.
So another technique that I use a lot is... I put the cards vertical again like I just did
for that little column and I build a column, but then I keep going and
I build a wall. You'll notice I'm using several cards at a time here especially
with the the wind we have going.
Now basically the first technique creates kind of like slabs.
The second technique creates columns and the third technique creates walls.
Which if you think about it constitutes an awful lot of the architecture that you see around you
and for that reason if you can do these three things
and put them together without them destroying each other, you can make a building.
So what's kind of amazing is this. Just watch what this little house of cards is capable of.
I could...(pounds on it) the skies the limit.
To build something outside I'm gonna have to have a bit of an enclosure to protect what I'm doing...
which is honestly probably harder work than stacking the cards.
and then there's gonna come a point where I'm done
and no matter what the weather is doing I'm gonna take that all down
and just see what happens.
If you're not into card stacking or never done it, you might think oh it's it's insanely difficult, it's impossible,
it's got to be boring it's got to be mindless but actually it's really fun for me, it's
very relaxing for me. It's not uncommon for me to put my headphones in and just
kind of really be jamming away while I'm working.
You know when you do with something with cards, it's not like you can snap them
together and they'll just stay. You have to engineer your solution and I always
like that about it. You know, I don't cut the cards, I don't bend the cards,
I don't fold the cards and I don't glue the cards.
So I like the fact that you've got these rectangles
and you have to make whatever it is that's prescribed using just those.
Well we got the tower. It's not done but it's about as high as I can go in here
without getting too close to the plastic which at this point is moving around
a lot with this wind we're getting.
I think it's a very good bit of luck that we didn't take this down.
We're just gonna wait until the morning and see what happens.
Maybe I can get up here at the ladder and build it a little higher.
It's very windy.
*thunder*
I hear thunder...
It seems to be intact maybe a little worse for the wear.
It's like see those right there how they're just almost like have an s-curve to them.
That how they all looked in the night. So I came out here, pulled them off and put new ones on.
High-stakes Jenga I guess.
One thing that people may not think about when it comes to cards is humidity.
If it's too humid the cards like lose their strength and they become soggy and wet
like a paper towel that's wet is just limp. There we go...
We're good, we're clear.
Look at that breeze, it's so crazy
Though I've built hundreds and hundreds of card projects and you know this is first.
I've never attempted anything like this.
It's really not a huge build for me, maybe eight or ten hours of actual stacking.
But you know the payoff is just doing something really cool, something really different.
You know I've never had a house of cards where I could take a picture
and have you know tree branch and surrounding it.
Look at that breeze.
Holy cow.
There's probably a lot of reasons why I don't build card houses outside.
That was almost it right there.
This tower is uh...I mean we're guessing I think it's maybe 13 or 14 feet tall.
I would say give or take 5000 cards and as far as I know
this is the tallest card house that's ever been built outside.
Okay now it's a 10 foot tower.
My outdoor card skyscraper is the Coolest Thing I've Ever Made!
You build a house of cards, okay great but then now what?
You know you're not gonna put the box and send it home...you're gonna knock it down
and a lot of people will say well doesn't that make you sad and it's like
no I know that's gonna happen. That's just part of the lifecycle of a house of cards.
Coolest Thing I've Ever Made!
And it's beautiful. You know like destruction can be a
a really beautiful thing. You know what's really beautiful?
A house of cards in a ruinous state.
"Weeee" Yeah, weee is right.
Get it! Yay!
That's pretty good. You're a pretty good demolition artist.
My name's Guy I'm the creator of the show. Thanks so much for watching and big thanks
to Brian Berg the card stacker who went above and beyond like insanely above
and beyond for this one. You can check out his other work at www.cardstacker.com
there's gonna be a link in the description below. I'm gonna get back to
editing so thank you very much for watching
and yeah like subscribe do all those things!