Just a mile from campus, inside the historic Washington National Cathedral, volunteers are slowly piecing together a 500,000-brick Lego replica of the church. When computer science major Joseph DeNavas, CAS/BS ’26, visited the site, he didn’t just see a toy—he saw a system, a digital playground, a way to make the plastic architecture come to life.
As the individual bricks joined to form what will—upon completion in 2030—be a minivan-sized monolith, DeNavas, who spent countless hours as a child assembling Lego pirate ships, imagined a video game to complement the physical project. Balancing a full-time course load with a full-time job as a dispatcher with the AU Police Department (AUPD), DeNavas pitched the idea to the cathedral’s visitor and engagement specialist. Then, it was game on.
The technical construction of this digital twin was far more complex than snapping plastic blocks together. DeNavas didn’t jump straight into high-end game engines; he started small, experimenting on OpenProcessing.org, a platform for creative coding. A teaching assistantship under psychology professor Arthur Shapiro gave him the hands-on experience and mentorship needed to tackle the project’s massive scope.
The turning point came when the team—which grew to include Nathan Payson, CAS/BS ’24, and Catherine Carroll, CAS/BS ’26—obtained the “blueprints”: a massive CAD file containing over 300,000 virtual bricks designed by a Lego master builder in Portugal.
DeNavas migrated the project to Unity, an industry-standard engine, to handle the massive dataset. The team used blueprints and photos to build an accurate 3D world featuring dynamic lighting and mini-games. By integrating diverse elements—including sketches from AUPD Sergeant Kyle Johnson—the project evolved into a true community collaboration.
“When Joseph first pitched the project, I thought he was just brainstorming,” recalls computer science professor Mark Nelson, DeNavas’s capstone advisor. “But he already had a 3D model running on his laptop. He created this opportunity for himself and delivered on it.”
Today, the National Cathedral Game serves as a bridge between the physical and the digital worlds. While visitors to the real cathedral contribute $10 to place a physical brick, they can also step up to a screen and dive into DeNavas’s world. As the physical Lego tower inches toward completion, so does its digital twin. DeNavas aims to release the full version by summer 2026, but he sees this as more than just a single game.
“If we could produce more games like this in partnership with museums,” DeNavas says, “AU students would gain real-world experience, connect with people from all these prestigious institutions, and showcase their work. AU could become a hallmark for interactive learning.”