In June 2025 the experiential agency Amplify brought LEGO’s World Play Day to the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, and The Factory NYC built the set: five game stations, two donut characters, a giant half basketball and a run of street signs, all fabricated in our Brooklyn shop and installed on the lawn in a single day.
About the event
Amplify’s concept turned a stretch of the Greenway into “The Block,” a LEGO Brick City where basketball turns up everywhere: in a snack shop, at a bus stop, on a newsstand, behind a lobster shack. Kids moved from station to station taking shots, then built their own MVP card out of LEGO bricks. The activation was live for four days, June 10 through 13.
Every piece had to read as a cartoon version of a city block, survive four days outdoors on an open, windy lawn, and stand up to kids climbing, leaning and throwing balls at it. Amplify supplied the creative renderings and 3D files, and we worked out how to build each one.
The entrance basketball
Kids entered the Block past a 50-inch half basketball. We carved it from blocks of EPS foam, cut grooves into the surface for the seams, and applied a thick hard coat strong enough for several kids to sit and stand on. A textured finish gives the impression of a ball’s pebbled surface. The dome sits on a plywood base with a rubber, non-slip edge and is weighted inside so it stays put on the grass.
Fill the Donut and the donut people
The first game stop was a donut shop, about 15 feet wide and 8 feet tall, with an oversized sprinkled donut on its facade. Kids shot balls through the donut, and a netted chute behind it returned the balls without leaving an opening big enough for a child to crawl into. The donut itself was CNC-cut from EPS foam and hard coated.
Two donut characters stood next to the shop as photo ops, at 4 and 4.5 feet tall. Each is a hard-coated foam donut on a plywood backer, carried on 3-inch posts fixed to a 36-inch steel base plate, with a face-sized hole in the middle and a pair of off-the-shelf clown shoes at the bottom.
The Lobster Shack
Lob Ball was a Boston lobster shack: a 12-foot booth with a striped roof, a toss game built into the front, and eight lobsters. The six smaller lobsters were 3D printed from a smoothed version of the client’s model, and the two larger ones were carved from EPS foam. All eight were finished in a single matched red and mounted on the roof and on lobster crates beside the booth.
Beat the Bus, Slam Dunk and the newsstand
The other game buildings followed the same approach: general flat construction with scenic detail, painted, with graphics vinyl supplied and applied by another vendor. Beat the Bus is a 12-foot bus shelter with a curved roof, a run of hoops and a remote-controlled countdown clock that staff start and stop for each player. The Slam Dunk photo op is a 17-foot starburst wall built around a large yellow hoop, which the client expected to be the most-used prop on the site, so it was built for durability with no sharp edges. Next to it, a newsstand doubled as the MVP card build station, with a working side door so materials could be locked inside overnight.
Built for a park
Because the Block sat on an open lawn and was meant for children, every structure was designed around stability and scale. Sign posts got ballasted bases, kid-facing elements stayed at 6 feet and under, and nothing went above 10 feet. We matched LEGO’s Pantone palette to exterior paint and split the shop into two crews, one on the buildings and one on the sculptures, so each could keep moving in parallel.
Install
Everything traveled to Boston on two trucks and went in on June 8, with June 9 held in reserve for finishing, ahead of the Block opening to families on June 10.
