In a vague press announcement, the LEGO Group and IKEA stress the importance of play and the challenges adults and children have when perceiving play space differently. This leads to the new product range the collaboration has produced, BYGGLEK – images are not yet available.

According to the announcement, which cites research the companies have commissioned, children want more playtime with their parents and adults to see play as vital to wellbeing – but “Busy schedules and homework are a couple of obstacles, other restrictions like finding the space to play are more evident for adults than for children.

Having identified the problem is a space, the LEGO Group and IKEA are stepping in with the solution. LEGO designer Rasmus Buch Løgstrup explains: “There’s a conflict between how grown-ups look at organising and how children look at the creative play. Every grown-up has stepped on a LEGO brick at night time. But organising LEGO bricks the grown-up way also means ending the play sometimes. Adults sort by typology – socks going into one drawer and belts into another. Kids sort by story, clustering it into different pieces, where you can have a half-built space ship. And in that, you can find the one piece that you need. What if we could turn that perceived mess into something wonderful?”

The press release reveals that the intention is for the obstacles that cause parents and children to differ in their perception of play will be overcome.

“To do this, systematic thinking becomes key. We know that children continue the story building in their minds long after they have stopped playing with their toys. So we asked ourselves, couldn’t pause and play be a way to enable quick play? We know that children are playing with screens because it’s easy to get started. So what if we could make the LEGO play continue? That would make quick play easier and then build on the play that is continuing in the child’s mind anyway”, said Andreas Fredriksson, designer at IKEA.  BYGGLEK products will launch in 2020.