How shall a team of designers use atypical tools to develop new ideas, and possibly to recreate building rules?Building blocks, most infamously, LEGOs, were designed as a learning tool for children to develop their three-dimensional geometric language.
The recent creation of LEGO's architectural theme, has given us opportunity to explore these building blocks as a tool of creation. Using LEGOs might be 'boxed' by its physical limitations but it also forced us to discover and expand on certain opportunities. Physical models always have had an additional level of persuasion, in that they are actually built, so in turn whatever it represents can seemingly also be built on a grander scale. LEGO creations are the same in that way, yet at the same time, it interestingly introduces the idea of a different type of building system. A system closer to that of currently popular prefabricated modules which combines structure and space into "blocks", a completly different structural system than that of the column and beam system.
Tools of creation, be it physical crafting or digital explorations, are like our hands. With practice, like forming new nerve connections, these tools become an extension of the mind, making mere ideas into reality.
We discovered that exploring with building blocks allowed our creations to “grow”, inching closer to the concepts of nature, which draws and inspires us in our designs. If these building blocks were cells and their connections malleable and adaptable, it could then grow, wilt, adapt, evolve and adjust to the needs of its occupants or to the environment just as in nature. Our only barrier is the limits of imagination and of technology.
...or maybe in the end, this was all just to satisfy our own childhood fantasies.
© 未/WAY Studio 2019
