Architectural toys - first semester 2023-2024

This year I condensed even more the theoretical part of the course. It's true, over time and with so many repetitions, the result is to be increasingly synthetic and focus the course on the most important and pertinent things.

Sometimes fewer things in more time is more effective than a barrage of information that is of little use to students.

The result was more careful, more complex and more interesting work. The students themselves felt the difference and, once again, enjoyed the course.

Architectural Toys Course at FAUP 2017/18

One more teaching experience at FAUP in the Architectural Toys Course during the academic year 2017/18. And some more very interesting results made by the students that attended the course.

The first work is based on Aldo Rossi architecture and was developed by the student Silvia Scandola. It is a construction set made by simple and colored shapes, very close to the famous Italian architect's language. Even the box was designed as a part of the toy with nine separated spaces to pack the pieces after the use.   

The pieces

The box cover

The box interior

The second work I would like to present is by the student Lucie Adoud and is a very simple idea using the Velcro technology (few peoples know that Velcro is a patented product https://www.velcro.com/). Several sticks made by foam and wraped by Velcro can be easily jointed creating several different geometries, structures and shapes.

The toy

An example of structure

Another example

The third toy is designed by Kathrin Benstem and it is inspired in the traditional tiled of the city of Porto. Kathrin created a toy through which it is possible to create the patterns that are used in the facades of Porto using stamps and ink. Is is very simple and easy to use and the results are always different. You can combine different stamps for different patterns. Beside that, all the toy has a vintage style that can really combine with the tiles tradition.

The toy

The stamps

Some results

The kit

The last work is by Mariana da Silva Ribeiro & Mariana Pereira Campos that created the "MagnetHouse - to build and color". The toy is based on magnetic joints between some simple volumes, made by steel sheet, and magnetic elements that simulate different materials.

The box made by the steel sheet volumes and the magnetic pieces

The volumes can create a building

The final result with the materials

"The Cube" exercise at 2014/15 Architectural Toys course

This year I introduced a new short exercise in my course at FAUP called "the cube". I noted a lack of skills in the students manipulating materials, raw and processed. Even if they know how buildings are made, they still never worked with wood, steel or other material different than cardboard or polystyrene (that they use for the models) and they can't understan how each materail can influence or be inspiring in the design processes.

So the idea was to create a cube with 20cm that should communicate something. Some kind of meaningful object, something between a piece of art (that improve our knowledge) and a device for some manufacturing experience. The unique rule was that the solid produced should be inscribed or circumscribed in a cube, in other words the cube must be "readable" into the solid.
For several student was a first contact with materials and technologies and they soon realized the importance of the details and, more than that, of the construction process.

The results was quite interesting because most students could not detach from architectural thinking. So they made several "building models" thinking in scale (big or small), gravity (there was an up and a down...), circulations (doors and windows). Nevertheless good proposals appeared and a lot of students produced some interesting cubes with different materials as steel wire, mirror, wax or concrete.
Here some examples, sorry for the horrible pictures... next year I'll take better, I promise.

"Construction toys make better boys" - Article for the Magazine Dinâmicas

Here is the last number #3 of the Magazine Dinâmicas from the Industrial Design Course at Soares dos Reis School of Arts in Porto. This time is in portuguese language and it is surrounded by other very interesting articles about several issues around teaching and design processes. 

The edition is quite good both in the contents selection (you can find my article between the pages 38 and 45), and in the design layout. 

Please enjoy your reading.

The link: http://issuu.com/dinamicas_easr/docs/dinamicas_3_easr

Architectural toys conference at Soares dos Reis School of Arts

Next Monday I'll be at Soares dos Reis School of Arts in Porto for a brief conference about Architectural toys. This event is insert in a large commemoration of 130 years of that School and will be one more opportunity to spread my work for younger people. 

This time I'll talk mostly about the relationship between the design studio exercise, that is a characteristic of all art courses, and the idea of play. Indeed play is an action quite close to the design process in a school context because it is under simulated and controlled circumstances too. Behind that play is, as design studio teaching, a reduction of  complexity and it is restricted in a certain space and time (following the famous Huizinga theory about play as explained in his book Homo Ludens).   Toys are powerful devices in order to educate young children, through play, for the creation as an uncertain and  heuristics thinking route, as design thinking is.

Please find here the main poster: