Here’s a story I did about skyscraper engineer Benton Johnson for the University of Minnesota Alumni Magazine. Johnson grew up in the woods outside Bemidji, Minnesota. Now he wants to revolutionize high-rise buildings by making them out of wood, which has a much smaller carbon footprint than the concrete and steel used everywhere around the world.

Such Great Heights: In college, Benton Johnson set his sights on skyscrapers. He’s been in rarified air ever since:

When Benton Johnson was 9 years old, his father, Everette Johnson, decided they needed a new house. The family of six lived north of Bemidji.

“I looked through stacks of house plan books,” says Everette, who is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation. (Benton is not.) “But I never found a plan that matched exactly what I wanted. So I drew my own blueprints.”

To show the family what it would be like, he decided to build a scale model.

“LEGOs were a big part of the kids’ childhood,” Everette says. “In the morning the LEGOs would come out and get spread out on the floor. The kids would play with them all day. Somebody was always building something.”

Everette decided to do the same. “I had to fight with the kids to get enough LEGOs to try and build it,” he recalls. “They kept wanting to tear it apart.”

Read the rest here.