You’d need more than a shovel and bucket to make a sandcastle like this! Soaring 17.65 meters (57.9 feet) into the air—about the height of a six-story building—it’s the tallest sandcastle ever constructed.

An international team of sand sculptors built the record-breaking sandcastle at a festival in Germany last summer. The group gave the structure a conical shape with a wide, flat base. Its low center of mass—the point around which an object’s weight is evenly distributed—made the massive mound of sand less likely to topple.

The sculptors built the huge structure by packing wet sand into plywood forms stacked one on top of the other. Once tall enough, the team removed the forms one by one as they carved the castle’s details from the top down. “The process is complete when you take the last form from the bottom,” says team member Martin de Zoete.