Bricksburgh

Enter a colorful world of art and engineering in Bricksburgh, a new exhibition now open at Carnegie Science Center featuring building challenges, interactives, plus free-play and demonstration areas, designed to encourage visitors of all ages to explore the power of creativity with familiar toy building bricks.

Please note: The Science Center’s Fourth Floor, frequented by families with young children, is home to exhibits/interactives which receive heightened attention due to their constant use. In the Little Learner Clubhouse, a “Yuck Bucket” is for adults to deposit items that have been soiled (in children’s mouths, etc.). The bucket will be emptied, the items sanitized and restocked as needed. The balls in our Tomato Garden will be collected and run through a dishwasher’s sanitization-level cycle each night. All bricks in Bricksburgh will be cleaned and rotated throughout the day. Signage will alert visitors to the cleaning routine. Our staff in red are here to help if you have any questions!

An engaging experience for anyone who has ever picked up a building brick and let their imagination run free, Bricksburgh invites visitors to take on the roles of architect, artist, engineer, and builder at brick activity tables, stocked with thousands of bricks.

• Architecture Challenge: Select from images of a famous architectural structures from around the world, and then create a brick-based representation of that structure.
• Drag Race: Explore car construction and test out your designs on ramps with built-in timers.
• Six Brix: How many variations on an object (tower, duck, etc.) can you create – using only six blocks? (There are almost 950 million possibilities!)
• The Floor is Lava: Having to build only on pillar foundations of different heights and configurations challenges you with several design problems, including cantilevered construction, bridge spans, etc.
• Open Play: Let your imagination run wild with thousands of bricks and unlimited possibilities!
• No Peeking: Try to build a simple shape behind a screen, using only your sense of touch to determine what and where the pieces go.
• Tilt Maze: Arrange and re-arrange straight ‘bar’ pieces to create a 3D maze for a ball to navigate through on a tilt-table.
• Big Brix: For younger visitors, large-format bricks allow for simpler construction.
• Catenary Arch: Can you create a free-standing arch? Physics says, “Yes!”
• Shake Tables: Engineer a brick-based structure on our shake tables, then set off an earthquake to see how your design holds up.
• Shake Shack: Take a seat in our shack, and feel a real earthquake, recreated from the original seismograms!