2023-05-25 00:50:58
When the game becomes pure, it’s time for design to take the field. Toy culture and the world of design have always traveled together, populating rooms and bedrooms with memorable objects, capable of restoring the sense of a civilization for children, sometimes even a political vision. As in the case of Enzo Mariwhich in 1968 bordered an empty playing field with a series of marble slabs, The Big Stone Game, to celebrate the freedom of children to design their own free time. After all, “playing is a serious matter”, said Bruno Munari: for this reason, May 28 is not only there International Game Day, but an opportunity to take stock of how design can improve those formidable mediums between childhood and the world that are toys. We talk about it with Luca Boscardindesigner and Italian based in Amsterdam, who with the metallic silhouettes of Animal Factory brought the culture of play to the urban scale.
How and why do you become a toy designer today?
«I studied architecture in Venice, and there I learned to design. The steps that lead from an idea to a project also apply to toys. The big difference, in my case, is that I soon realized that I wouldn’t be able to put anything of my own into the architecture, so I reduced the scale and made the skyscrapers out of cardboard and the cars out of wood… I’m fascinated by the world of children, their great ability to dream, their aptitude for synthesis and abstraction. In my job it’s a bit like I keep asking myself: what will I be when I grow up? That’s when I find myself a rider for horses, a trainer of metal crocodiles and elephants, an architect of entire cities in cardboard».
Are there designer toys or just good and bad toys?
«I believe that anything “design” has, in recent years, taken on a misleading meaning: almost as if it were synonymous with aesthetically bizarre and expensive. As the father of Olympia and Galileo, I wonder every day what makes a toy a good toy. Surely the creative stimulation is one of the main elements of judgement, the freedom of use as well, and then precisely, the material, the tactile effect, the sound it makes, for example, when it is slammed on the ground».
Does a good toy have to have rules?
«One of the main characteristics of a good toy is to invite the child to play as he wishes, leaving him free to use and interpret the game. One of the open toys I’m most proud of is Archiville, a cardboard city where the rule is that there are no rules: you can put houses on top of houses, trees on top of houses or on roads… I think this can be defined as a designer toy”.
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What does it mean to be a toy designer in an increasingly digital world?
“A ball will always remain a ball. As in any aspect of life, common sense and balance are needed. However, while digital is galloping, the risk for analog is of remaining stuck in the vintage dimension, and therefore of no longer being interesting for children. We designers have to give the little ones the cues they need to ask themselves questions. With We are all equal, a sort of memory that I designed for Corraini, I worked on inclusiveness and gender equality, stimulating their perception as a value. From this point of view, even an analog game can play its role in an increasingly digital world, and contribute to an important awareness».
With Animal Factory he has brought the spirit of the toy designer to the urban scale, imagining squares populated by giraffes and chimpanzees. How much do adults need play too?
«Enzo Mari said that “children live in a world of giants”: I started from here to enlarge the pastel drawing of a giraffe in my notebook a hundred times and make it six metres. I wanted to imagine that all of us, sometimes, want to go back to being children, and fill our eyes with courage in front of a superhero. It’s kind of what happens when, instead of on a bench, you sit on a green metal crocodile or swing on an elephant, or even train with a gorilla. Animal Factory makes children again. You can hang, swing, sit, balance, strap on your bike, or use giraffes and chimpanzees as exercise bars. They can simply be a meeting point. how nice would it be to meet the Giraffe or the Crocodile? I think it is important to bring these unexpected elements to cities: they are the stimulus for social relationships. Well, maybe doing toy design means just that: breaking an obvious rigidity with something ironic and unexpected».
The toys invented by designers
There is a long list of architects and designers who have often ventured into the world of children to interpret the central role played by games in the processes of growth and knowledge. And on the occasion of the international day that celebrates them, we present a selection of objects designed for the little ones who have made the history of design
Look at the gallery with the furnishings inspired by the game
Read the interview with toy designer Luca Boscardin
In toys, the story of whoever owned them
by Maria Carlotta Mattedi
#games #toys #joy #free