The brief
For its global Summer of Play, LEGO® wanted a hands-on interactive that fit the idea of building, worked for walk-up families with no one to run it, and stood up to the footfall of a commercial attraction.
Playable was commissioned to create BeatBricks: a bespoke LEGO edition of our BeatBlocks Live installation, deployed across four LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre sites on three continents, in Berlin, Boston, Birmingham and Shanghai.
Why it suited a commercial attraction
High-footfall attractions are an unforgiving environment. Units run all day, are used by unsupervised children, and can’t absorb staff time or downtime. BeatBricks was specified for exactly that:
- A single power connection, adaptable to local supply in any territory
- No network dependency, it works whether or not the venue’s wi-fi does
- No daily reset, and nothing for staff to configure between visitors
- Remote diagnostics and updates from Edinburgh, over the venue’s wi-fi or an optional mobile-SIM router
- Modular shipping, built to travel and install quickly
- DUPLO play, sized for the youngest visitors, with custom sounds, themed decals and play trays in the LEGO Summer of Play look
Deploying across Europe, North America and Asia in one summer meant handling local power standards, shipping and on-site coordination, site by site.
What happened
The four units ran through LEGO Summer of Play in 2025. Because BeatBricks captures its own play analytics, the activation gave a real-time picture of how families actually used it, the first time guest interaction had been measured this way across the sites.
LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Berlin introduced BeatBricks on their blog as a world first, and a barrier-free way to make music.
In August alone, across the four sites, families recorded more than 6 million brick interactions across an estimated 5,946 play sessions, around 50 a day at each site. Most play was collaborative, with visitors jamming on two or three of the four stations at once, and sessions regularly ran for several minutes at a time.
LEGO purchased the four units outright as a pilot, and three remain in active use.