Play + Use

We are living in a digital age where the virtual world provides an almost parallel world for us to engage, replacing even our immediate physical world, creating a cyber space so real and so seductive.

Children been subjected to this abyss of digital realm begins to pursuit more excitement and thrills in games and internet. The once humble games like marbles, tic tac toe etc.. are becoming almost obsolete. They have lost the innocence of "playing". The design would like to address this problem with the concept of play and use. It would like to spur the spirit of playing and building for children at a tender age, in a space that will incubate their growth. By using an anonymous unit ("brick"), it allows children of suitable age to engage with intellectual to spawn upon its creativity, shaping the interior of his/her space and expressing his way of manipulations perhaps with the help of his parents. With these "brick", the terms wall, floor and furniture becomes mutated as the different configurations created by the children and the parents creates a new system that is versatile and almost unique, responding to their immediate imagination and needs. This "brick" is designed with 2 types of surfaces namely hard and soft, which allows the manipulated furniture to have more flexibility in usage with its dual qualities. The space which the child play with the "brick" is named the playground sandwiched between the living and resting strips which forms the center and the focus of the family spaces. This speaks of easy monitoring and also the ability of how the playground begins to even influence the surrounding spaces. This playground is the platform which paints the imagination of the child projecting as a showcase to the public at the facade too. The entire composition of the "brick" with these ever changing showcases begins to formulate another system for the building at a larger scale. The alternate stacking of each dwelling units creates a new building typology that is punched with green breathing holes in every unit for a healthier living environment. While it is very easy to just provide a portal for information for children, the provision of highly interactive physical spaces is almost difficult to formulate. This design attempted on this aspect

The design adapted a very simple grid of 3m wide x 3m long x 3m headroom x 12 bays and using Japanese system of modular, the design created this system of "brick" which offers 3 dimensional involvements of changes within each bay and beyond. This grid of 12 bays creates a framework for easy subtraction and addition of spaces, creating spaces that can be borrowed within the matrix. This matrix allows layering of spaces with different allocated activities and also the pocketing of activities to be contained as needed. To create a more defined enclosure in any bay, a sliding storage partition can be easily provided to enhance the flexibility of redefining the space. The transformations of these 12 bays evolved over times, dictated and influence by the users according to their needs and desire to be creative. Each bays of 9 sqm are small but working within the matrix, it offers a stage that is highly manipulative and responsive to needs at different stage of parenthood and child development. This design endeavor to devise a new lifestyle from the framework of Japanese culture that imbues the sensitivity of a child's incubation, with a simple yet very workable system.