Frank Lloyd Wright would be impressed.

Using only Lego bricks, 2nd and 3rd grade students at Longfellow School have teamed up to build a mini-replica of the world famous architect's Home and Studio of Oak Park in only two weeks of limited class time.

Details such as Wright's trademark planting urns at the entrances and octagonal library are all there. A few students even built some Wright furniture for the interior. This weekend, they'll present their work at the Lego Kidsfest at McCormick Place in Chicago.

The project is the idea of non-profit Oak Park Education Foundation's Geared Up, a Lego engineering program in District 97.

Geared Up coordinator Gretchen Junker heard of the upcoming Kidsfest and offered to get Longfellow 2nd and 3rd graders involved.

After submitting a winning essay, the students in the classes of Eric Podlasek and Roxane Pasquinelli were sent a box of Legos, along with instructions to construct a building unique to their local area.

But the Home and Studio was so complicated that early on some students questioned whether it could be done, especially when the requirement was to do it on a scale no bigger than 2 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet.

"The kids all said, 'why didn't we pick the Sears Tower?'" Junker said. "Or even a later Frank Lloyd Wright home wouldn't have been as complicated."

But because it is probably Wright's best-known and most-visited location in Oak Park, the class went forward with the challenge.

As a first step, they had to acquire more Legos, as the ones given to them were not enough to reflect the unique design of Wright.

Before even laying their Lego brick foundation, however, students first visited the actual building on Chicago and Forest Avenues a couple weeks ago — Junker said for some students it was either their first time inside the building or their first time even seeing it.

Local architects came by and helped students grasp the importance of the design, and helped fit the Legos to match the scale of the actual building.

Students studied actual draft plans of the structure as well, and some even came up with architectural plans of their own dream home for a related class activity.

By Tuesday, students were putting on the finishing touches, like adding a sidewalk on the Chicago Avenue side.

Podlasek gathered his 2nd grade students to discuss their success for a morning discussion. One girl exclaimed, "I still can't believe that we built that."

It was a sentiment soon expressed by others in the group discussion, and some students even recalled when they had felt completing the project was an impossible goal.

"I guess we proved that it's not impossible through teamwork," Podlasek told the students.