Bryan Berg, a world record holder for his card structures, builds a model of the Rhode Island State House that later appeared in an Internet video promoting the Showtime series Brotherhood, set in Providence. The model, which weighed 60 pounds, was built in Albuquerque, N.M.

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Albuquerque Journal / Eddie Moore

Bryan Berg played his cards right. He produced a straight, a flush, a full house and the Rhode Island State House.

In fact, Berg held all the cards, and placed them just so. But they were no match for two flying watermelons and a crate of apples.

Brotherhood went away the winner. The Showtime series shot in Rhode Island won the promotional jackpot: a so-called viral ad.

So far more than 1.2 million people have viewed the 4-minute spot on www.YouTube.com showing the creation and the destruction of Berg’s ephemeral art, a large-scale, 22,000-card (state) house of cards.

“If something I made was suddenly permanent, no one would care about it. The value or perceived value that people see in it is that it is temporary.”

Berg, 33, of Santa Fe, N.M., is quite possibly the world’s only professional “cardstacker.” He has traveled the world building card structures on commission, and often breaking his own world record for tallest card structure, which now stands at 26 feet. In 1999, Berg visited the Southeastern New England Home Show at the Convention Center in Providence. He didn’t have time to build anything grand, so instead he put together a foot-high card foundation topped with a sheet of plywood and asked groups of people to stand on it, showing its strength.

Last summer, Showtime asked Berg if he’d stack cards in the shape of the Rhode Island State House.

The grand, white marble domed building is “an iconic figure in the show,” said Rob Hayes, Showtime’s senior vice president and general manager of digital media.

Working three days in a studio in Albuquerque, Berg built a 60-pound, playing-card model of the Rhode Island State House for an undisclosed sum.

“It wouldn’t be possible for me at this stage in my life to make this amount of money doing anything else. And that’s by quite a margin.”

Showtime, meanwhile, is getting lots of free publicity, which is the goal of viral advertising. You create an online video and hope it circulates.

“It’s a word-of-mouth tactic,” Hayes said. “Someone sees a video and forwards the link to 10 friends. It grows and grows. There is nothing better than somebody recommending something.”

Viral advertising, according to Hayes, is most effective with young adults. So it’s not surprising that a young adult, Tevor Noren, a 2003 Brown University graduate now working for Showtime, found Berg’s Web site (www.cardstacker.com) and proposed Berg’s art as a promotional outlet for Brotherhood.

“We were blown away by some of the things we saw,” Hayes said.

This would include a football stadium, a cityscape, Cinderella’s castle at Disney World and the White House, among other domed civic buildings.

“People don’t really look at architecture closely. People looked at the Iowa State House and said ‘Look, honey, it’s the White House.’ I don’t remember the White House having five smaller domes. Maybe they think that because it’s white.”

Berg builds his structures with the white face of the cards facing out. It better communicates the medium.

“If it was the back of cards, people won’t realize it’s a house of cards and it can topple. But if they see an ace, queen and king, they tiptoe up to it and hold their breath. They want to see that pure classic house of cards, which I’ve come to enjoy.”

The enjoyment began for Berg as a boy on an Iowa farm. His grandfather showed him how to build structures with cards.

“Initially, of course, it was a hobby. Later, it was an obsession.”

In 1992, his senior year in high school, Berg had developed a honeycomb-style construction that allowed him to build strong structures and establish his first world record for cardstacking height, 14 feet 6 inches.

“Unbeknownst to me, that would serve as a worldwide Yellow Pages ad for being a freak at something. That has kept my phone ringing since.”

About 90 percent of Berg’s business, he says, comes from his Web site, which has received nearly 40 million hits in the last four years. While cardstacking credentials and qualifications are hard to come by, Berg has them. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture, from Iowa State and Harvard University, respectively.

“It doesn’t matter what you’re building with. There are certain laws in effect when weight is placed on a structure.”

Cardstacking, he says, is art and engineering, the model-making of architecture. The science and craft, Berg says, divides people.

“There is one group that thinks it’s the greatest thing and that I’m some high-level individual who’s on to something miraculous and divine. There is another group of people who look at what I do and think that it’s worthless, or make assumptions about me that I live in a van near the river and that I’m a misfit in society and don’t have any friends.”

When Berg moved out of Iowa and lived for a time in New York, he said he made fast friends. He simply had to tell people about his job.

“They wanted to high-five me. It was like I was their hero. I found a way to say screw it to the way most people have to make a living.”

brourke@projo.com