Connected Cubes

Tool for play

2022

The “Connected Cubes” is a tool for play, it is designed for children and anyone who likes to play, it can be made from very light material. It has holes on the sides, for soft tubes that can be fitted in, then allowing it to connect to other cubes.

Design process: To start exploring the material, I took a piece of EPS and started cutting square shapes with a thermal cutter, at this point I didn’t know what to expect, nonetheless, I wanted to connect these shapes somehow. The playful aspect of this exploration was the high point of the project, playful because it lacked expectations and letting the material dictate the shape freed me from a need to control. In a subjective level, the material was asking me what to do with it, rather than me trying to master the material.

The result was a set of tools for play, still as a prototype. It has holes on the sides, for soft tubes that can be fitted in, then allowing it to connect to other cubes. The idea of playful artistic endeavour is not new, take dadaism as an example and we can see that when a period in history asks for a less serious approach to social norms what results is often a movement involving humour, whimsy, artistic freedom, emotional reaction, irrationalism, and spontaneity.

Spontaneous creative work asks the artist to become one with the material. This is achieved by touching, listening, feeling, cutting, folding or anything else the material asks. For EPS, cutting with a thermal cutter gave me such a nice feeling, its lightness was ideal for the manipulation of a 4-year- old, and therefore this aspect has become the predominant one for my search of a more durable material, since it ideally has to be light.