Getting through to them

"Although a message is recieved by an individual, the "room" is very crowded. Messages are designed and launched from a social and cultural stage full of actors. Even if one little message manages to best the competition and reach the ears or eyes of one individual, the person must understand, believe, weigh, and interpret the words and images in the context of her own personal, complex psychology."

Julia B. Corbet in "Communicating Nature"

Loose Parts

The more loose parts a child has to play with, the more creative, and capable they are of problem solving. This is called the loose parts theory. It implies that the design of toys should allow for loose parts. This could be applied in two ways, first by making sets more complicated and extensive but because of recent, and very applicable movement of environmental design, one of the best things we can do is reduce. This is where the second application comes in, not making more things, but making things that are more compatible with what we already have. This idea was applied in my "Bildy" design, a fort building system which provides the tools for kids to build forts from found objects. In what other kind of toys could this be applied, perhaps on a smaller scale?

It amazed me when inspecting my own childhood, that I don't remember a lot of specific toys being used for their functions, we used everyday things to build bigger world, to create the toys we wanted. We didn't even need toys really, but just the freedom to play with everything in the house.

Bildy

created for the design21 Child's Play competition. It did not win, but a very similar concept won an Award of Merit, which makes me confident in it's strength





Bildy is a series of fort building supplies which are meant to be an enhancement of the basic found objects which usually end up being composed into children’s forts, such as blankets and sheets, chairs, tables, tree trunks, books, and rocks.

The pieces are not meant to replace these traditional supplies, but to enhance the opportunities available, and therefore extending the possibilities of the child's imagination.

ndividual pieces include first, tension lines with hook ends for hooking to other objects in the kit, or velcro strips at the ends for wrapping around legs of chairs, or other found objects. Tent poles, one type bending into an arch, and another kind, a shorter straight pole, both of which can held taught with tension lines. Non-slip weight holders which keep found weights from slipping on top of the sheets, or smooth floors. Strong, lightweight clips used to hold sheets together at the ends to create larger surfaces for walls and ceilings.

This toy is appropriate for children ages 9 and up. These are the stages when the child’s motor, and problem-solving skills are complex enough to be able to handle such a building task. Also a time when the child's imaginative play is becoming very complex, which makes the forts the perfect toy to integrate, and create to match the situations imagined.

The pieces are very small when broken down, to decrease the necessary storage that a typical pre-built playhouse requires.

Overall, Bildy fort building supplies allow for children to decide how far they want to go. There is no prescribed combination, and the children can customize, leave out, add more, find their own building supplies, and build something as big, or small, in any shape and size they can imagine!

Ideas for Conquering Throwaway Culture

Two main ideas:

Create more value:
-Higher prices create more percieved value, but somehow I don't think this will be the answer, because high-priced objects are not as available to middle and lower class people.
-Smaller runs of products would encourage the owner to value the object as unique, and irreplacable by any substitute, and in this case prices could be reduced to slightly higher than Target prices instead of incredibly high it would require to create a true percieved value from price.
-Objects that are more timeless, or even more difficult to achieve, new but timeless.

Values could be reformed, we currently value convenience at almost the highest level, which is probably, or almost definitely a result of the busy lifestyles we live. And why do we live this lifestyle? to be able to buy more convenient products.
- I once noticed that there are a great amount of old people around the city of Zürich during the day time, they have no job, yet they are not bored, because living their life takes all day, they do little errands, bringing their bottles to recycle, visiting their friends, washing their laundry, and maintaining their homes the old fasion way. The price is lower for doing things the "old fashioned way" and it fills the time that they spare by not having a job. And I suppose the way they use the time is more fulfilling as well, I'd much rather be baking a cake from scratch, and having a spic and span home then working day in day out.

Throwaway Culture

It has recently become clear that that throw-away culture the US (and also germany, but to a lesser degree) currently embraces is damaging the environment, and possibly damaging our opinions on products, and consumption. How to combat this throw-away culture? Factors such as (this list should probably be better, or more scientifically defined, but here's an idea of what I'm thinking) quality, durability, price, popularity, reparability, ease of maintanence, longevity, individuality, trendiness, and nostalgia determine what value we place on a specific object, and the value in turn determines how long we will hold on to specific objects, and how we mentally categorize them on the terms of throw-away product to precious heirloom.

Then one way to conquer throw-away culture would be to put more value back into everyday products.