Q-BA-MAZE

This is Q

To give a full 3D view of this construction, we put it on a lazy susan, gave it a spin, dropped in some balls, and started filming.

Just three kinds of cubes go together to make this and all Q-BA-MAZE constructions. This one is made with less than three 50-packs.

Notice that the balls all collect at the bottom (rather than scattering on the floor). This is because we used the bottom-exit cubes to make the base. Whenever the bottom-exit cubes are used as the base, they act as "catcher" pieces.

The White Stripes: Living the Lego Dream

This is probably the coolest Lego thing ever. Lego forming a swimming pool with colorful spiral waves! A lead guitarist made from just 34 bricks and animated!

It is the video for "Fell in Love with a Girl", which is the second single released from The White Stripes' third album White Blood Cells. Released in 2002, it reached number one.

I have a DVD with this and other videos by the director Michel Gondry. It comes with a little book titled:

I've been twelve forever

The title is Gondry's self description. He is now 44 years old and the director of the films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Science of Sleep (2006).

Isn't it funny that we grow up with adult voices telling us to "stop acting like a twelve-year-old" only to reach adulthood and to find one of the greatest industrial designers of the 20th Century stressing the importance to the design process of "the attitude of the child"? (See my Sept 1 post). And stepping into the present, to find Gondry producing such brilliant work by having just remained twelve (at heart)?

Here is the "making of video":

*the next coolest Lego thing I've seen is a Lego robot that can solve the Rubik's cube (I'll save that for another post)

Angels and Firecrackers

Charles Eames once said that in the "world of toys he saw an ideal attitude for approaching the problems of design, because the world of the child lacks self-consciousness and embarassment."

When I came across this statement in The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention (p. 139) it really jumped out at me. I have been doing a lot of play-testing with kids and adults and I have noticed how much more quickly kids learn. Children just proceed and experiment, they figure things out as they go along, they don't worry about rules, judgement or success.

The Eames House of Cards

The "world of the child" comment, led me to notice an underlying connection between the Eameses architectural design and their toy design (see this link for lots of photos of the interior and exterior of the Eames House). Both the Eames House and their toy the House of Cards have simple repetitive structural systems. The structural systems work, but it is the play of color and the collections/images of diverse things (in the house and on the cards) that brings them richness and meaning. Playing with the cards and living in the house are similar activities -- both involve a continual rearrangement of things, a richness of ideas that can come together in ways which inspire new unexpected and creative thoughts. Look closely at the photo here. Who ever thought of "angels and firecrackers in an archway"? These things don't go together. Such a combination is against the rules, but there are no rules in "the world of the child."

For more information on Charles and Ray Eames, see this website related to the Legacy of Invention exhibition organized by the Library of Congress and the Vitra Design Museum.