Capstone: Play as Process by Noah Treviño

play as process Capstone by Noah TreviĂąo

Table of Contents Entering Discourse Play as a Design Tool Edition MAT Nature or Nuture? A Modest Proposal Play as Process Zine Ekphrasis: The Zine Oblique Design Manifesto Bibliography

5 12 15 18 25 28 31 32 39 41

Entering Discourse

As a child of two educators, learning has always been a huge part of my life. As the only designer in my family, I constantly question how I arrived at architecture as a major and design as a profession. In what ways was I engaging with architectural and design thinking from an early age that helped grow and foster these aspects of my brain, and many others. How does play engage architectural thinking from an early age in a variety of ways and what does this mean not only for architecture and design—both in academic theory and practice—but for the non-designers of the world as well. During my Junior spring, I took a studio with Jennifer Yoos of VJAA in the Twin Cities focused largely on how architecture can create play. First, we designed a play structure at a riverside St. Louis park, then we created a rest stop along Route 61 in Minnesota that incorporated and engaged with methods of play and recreation. Now, instead of pursuing more instances of architecture creating play, I wanted to explore an almost inverse relationship of how play engages with and creates architecture. However, I want to think beyond the scope of true architectural theory and practice, but also understand how non-architects, through play, engage with and use architectural and design thinking (sometimes unknowingly).

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

What comes to mind initially when I think of play that engages these ways of thinking are blocks, Lego, The Sims series, fort-building, dollhouses, Sim City, Animal Crossing, and more. All of these methods of play incorporate some level of design thinking across a variety of scales and media. Through careful research, I hope to better understand and shed light to a sort of gamification of the profession and how architectural thinking can be a form of play, and how play can be a form of iteration and understanding utilized by architects and designers but also by children and non-design professionals who enjoy these methods of recreation.

architectu can be a

ural thinking a form of play

In terms of driving questions for my research I have arrived at the following: How do you introduce, grow, and foster architectural thinking? How do non-architects/designers engage with/participate in/use architectural thinking? How does architectural thinking engage with methods of play/ recreation? How is architecture influenced/informed by toys/games/play? What this means, is I will need to explore not only design and architectural theory, but how it engages with educational theory and child development. An understanding of toy/game design and history of play/recreation would also be beneficial to some degree.

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

Play as a Design Tool

For most of us, play was an integral part of our childhood—but what if we didn’t leave it behind? Some of the most popular methods of play engage with design thinking that we use as professionals daily. LEGO, dollhouses, The Sims, and many more all feature elements of creation, iteration, destruction, and many more. Not everyone who engaged with these toys or games went on to a career in design but they still utilized the design process in some capacity. What if we thought of design more like the limitless play of our childhood? How might this help us become better designers and creative problem solvers?

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÃ&#x2018;O

At first, one might question why Edition MAT [multiplicationn d’art transformable] could be relevant to what I am doing. However, there is something interesting about what the collective exhibitions did that ties into ideas of play. The exhibition brought forward a new fusion of art, technology, and design following the war—a highly disruptive time in art and technology. The works associated with Edition MAT were meant to be transformable, handled, and interacted with. Aspects of the collective were akin to other movements in art at the time such as kinetic art, Pop, and Fluxus. The works weren’t necessarily precious or perfect—they were fun and partially defined by the viewer and their context. This is where I find a link—the works of Edition MAT were playful. The objects themselves could almost be seen as design tools or experiments. The could be transformed to serve a new purpose or take forward a new idea. What initially inspired this capstone was a love of toys and games that incorporate design and creativity. These toys and games are tools that can help express creative ideas and can serve some value in a design process either in their pure form or in what they represent—think using physical blocks to design a building or model versus using the idea of modular units to construct something. The works in Edition MAT are just another version of that. What if you take Bruno Munari’s “Struttura continua” and drew the different forms it took when you moved it over time? The art object then becomes a tool for design. Another aspect of Edition MAT that I found important, was the accessibility of the works and project. By utilizing mass production, the objects in Edition MAT became far less precious or rarified which further encouraged play and interaction. On a similar level, when I think of Play as Process it is important that, while a design theory or philosophy, it is still accessible and marketable to a broader audience outside of academia. The idea of design and the design process being something untouchable, on a pedestal, or too precious to pick apart. Play as Process is meant to engage designers, and non-designers alike. It is a way of thinking creatively to solve problems in a fun way with a youthful approach. 15

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

Edition MAT

Nature or Nurture?

How do you raise a child to be a designer? Is there a recipe? Ratio? How much of who we become is nature and how much is nurture? We might never find out the answers to these questions—but at the very least we know our own stories.

From high school onwards, I realized I was different from most—if not all—of my family. My parents were educators, their parents were blue collar workers, their siblings a wide array of backgrounds and outcomes. However, there were no artists or designers. Just myself. Luckily, I had a great deal of support from my family as I decided to pursue art and design as a profession. As I entered this foreign territory, there was a lot of time spent wondering how exactly I got here in the first place.

How do you r to be a design

raise a child ner?

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÃ&#x2018;O

As a child, I was always making something—on any given day you could find me elbow deep in a tub of LEGO. First, I would follow the instructions to build the sets, but it wouldn’t take long for me to rip the creations apart to make something new from my own mind. Nothing felt precious or off limits as I wound up mixing sets, breaking pieces, and incorporating other materials and toys to achieve my youthful vision. It wasn’t just LEGO where I was exploring an iterative process either, my first adventures were with wooden Caroline Pratt unit blocks which were first designed in the early 1900s and inspired by Friedrich Fröbel, the man behind the kindergarten model. The system created withstands the test of time and my 4 year-old sister is still playing with them today (occasionally joined by me in a fit of nostalgia). It was an early way for me to both understand and create space, form, and structure.

Along similar lines were games like Sim City and Roller Coaster Tycoon, which incorporated construction and planning on a larger scale than just a home. It was a bit more broad than architecture, but it occupied a similar space in my brain as I worked to create worlds and experiences across a variety of scales. They were all fairly simplified experiences compared to professional level design but they served as important stepping stones. Without these toys and games, where would I have learned how to think like an architect, planner, engineer, or designer? These weren’t experiences I was having on my own or being taught from family—they came from play. These toys and games have a lot of potential and value still in my opinion, however. Why do we put them away when we grow older? With most of the creative play these toys and games facilitated, limits were there but they were also encouraged to be challenged. What if this mindset could be reintroduced to the creative process in a fun way? How do we make it not feel like work? How, through play, can we help remove the roadblocks in our head on what it means to build, create, make, or design and become stronger, more thoughtful designers? What happens if we start thinking like children again?

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

As I grew older and technology advanced a bit more I became able to work with new digital methods of play that engaged architectural thinking and made it a major component of gameplay. The Sims, for example, allowed me to get as close as I could to being an architect in middle school as I could build and design homes and structures in a simplified modeling platform that took into account a variety of eras, styles, and finishes. It was the first time I ever got to feel like an architect.

bring play ba design proces 24

ack into the ss A Modest Proposal

What does it mean to use play as a design tool and how can we distill it enough to be understood and utilized by all—regardless of age or experience? Creating an experience that is accessible to all is a major focus of architecture if you really think about it. By the end of the semester I have a clear goal: bring play back into the design process and show people how they can use it through a fun and interactive guide. This guide will take the form of a zine that can be mass produced and distributed anywhere by anyone. An important component of this guide is that it is accessible to a variety of people across ages, locations, education, and more. Introducing key architectural ideas alongside theories about the design process will be daunting, but it isn’t impossible. While I am exploring dense theory, I don’t want it to bog down my outcomes. These theories and philosophies need to be distilled and expressed simply and in a fun and engaging way if it is really going to captivate and gain momentum. Nobody wants to read flowery academic language about design and educational theory—they want to see it in action and working. This zine should be as fun of a learning experience for my 4 year-old sister as it is for my 40-something year-old parents. It should have value to designers and non-designers alike.

Play as Process Zine

For my capstone, I have decided on a series of three deliverables. The cupcake, or smallest deliverable, is a manifesto or call to action for incorporating play into the design process. The second, referred to as the birthday cake, is a series of interactive zines. Each zine takes a theme or design prompt and has a set of activities to help work towards an outcome. The activities vary between art, design, and writing as a way to work different areas of the brain and think through things more wholly. By taking the ideas from the manifesto and putting them in action it allows people to engage with the theory without necessairly knowing it inside and out.

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

The first zine was inspired by my first semester of architecture education at Washington Universty. I took the initial pattern-finding project we did in Forest Park and found a way to break it down to be more broad and accessible to anyone—even children. The entire theme of the book is working between observation and imagination. Negotiating what you see around you and what you can create in your mind, eventually leading to a sculptural design outcome. These zines are short, small, and meant to be fun. They’re designed for portability and ease of mass production and distribution. They can be worked on in print or digital. Following the zine would be my wedding cake, or largest-scale deliverable. At the moment, I envision this as a design workshop, activation, or event that would spread awareness for my theory and allow people to put it into practice regardless of background. Currently, I have been working with potential collaborators to help bring the event to life and be useful to people beyond just Sam Fox and the Washington University community of creatives.

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÃ&#x2018;O

Coming up with a theme is probably the hardest part. Working with broad-scale theory is easy, but how can it be distilled into a few pages of activities that nearly anyone can do and grasp painlessly? This is my role—a translator of sorts. They say if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime, but what happens when you teach a man how to design with childlike wonder? Without fear? What is the best way to even teach this man in the first place? The process is riddled with questions that might not always have an answer but you have to try. Setting a limit is the first step: 12 pages. This should be quick and easy. The size should allow for anyone to get their hands on the PDF file, print from home, and assemble without anything more than a printer and paper. It need not be frivolous, but it needs to be fun. It should encourage thinking and interacting with the world beyond the page. This isn’t a worksheet or a workbook, but a lens. The zine is meant to help the reader explore the world around them while thinking like a child and like a designer. The prompts seem silly at times but they get the creative juices flowing in a much more fun way than a project proposal slide deck. There will never be a right or wrong way to use the zine. They can be used individually or with groups. Young and old. I’m sure if I had a translator they could be considered international. Accessibility was the primary goal with these as I see a benefit to all. Design thinking and the design process doesn’t need to be limited to just designers. Design is quite literally about creative problem solving, an invaluable skill in this day and age. How can we bring it back to the forefront? How can we facilitate it in a way that is exciting, fresh, and digestible? The zine provides for cheap printing costs and ease of mass production. The lack of intricate binding allows for anyone to make the file a physical object with access to a simple printer. A short page count means it can be produced quickly, distributed easily, and understood with ease. The zine is meant to act more as a catalyst by sparking curiosity and encouraging the reader to want to dive further into this theory. It is an invitation to create, explore, and learn. 31

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

Ekphrasis: The Zine

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

Oblique Design: A Universal Tool

Inspired by Brian Eno of Talking Heads, I sought out to create a tool akin to his Oblique Strategies which were created first in 1975. At the time, Oblique Strategies was a set of cards for promoting creativity. The cards ranged in prompts, suggestions, or remarks to help people get past creative blocks. Some of the cards were geared more towards music composition but most of them were fairly accessible to creators. When reimagining the strategies, I decided to take an approach that anyone, anywhere, at any time would be able to “pull a card” and get a prompt or activity to help get creative juices flowing. These activities were geared towards minimal equipment, supplies, or technology being required to carry out any of the ideas. They range in diffifculty, direction, and specificity but can all be adapted to any creative practice. I didn’t want to limit my audience either. These “cards” are meant to be used by anyone at any age or stage of their “design education”. A child should be able to have as much fun with these prompts as a seasoned professional in the design world. A doctor should have no more difficulty carrying out one of the tasks than a retired architect. The goal of the project is to unlock and warm up the creative side of the brain no matter who you are. The project itself was coded in Python and can be ran by downloading the accompanying .csv file and opening the code with Drawbot, a free piece of software that brings together the world of computer science with art and design.

import csv import random #canvas setup w = 2000 h = 1600 size(w,h) fill(0.075,0.075,0.075) rect(0,0,w,h)

#select one prompt prompt = random.choice(list(all_prompts)) print(prompt) #populate the card fill(1) font(“Ballast v0.1”) fontSize(200) textBox(prompt, (150, 0, 1500, 1450), align=”left”) #share your work fill(1) font(“IBM Plex Sans”) fontSize(35) text(“Share what you made with #ObliqueDesign and tag @nrt.des”, (900, 150)) #saveImage(u”~/Desktop/NT_ObliqueStrat_01.png”)

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

#prompts being pulled into a list all_prompts = [] with open(“SP20_NT_ObliqueStrategiesRevisited.csv”, newline=””, encoding=”utf-8”) as f: for line in f: #turn on “print(line)” below to see full list #print(line) all_prompts.append(line)

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÃ&#x2018;O

Children don their environ invent it. 36

Their instinct and curiosity turn the urban landscape into a vital resource to be exploited (often to the discomfort of the adult world) in pursuit of a fluid “repertoire of playthings” that values activities and things over spatial relations. -Chris Berthelsen

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Play as Process: A Design Manifesto

Open your mind a little today. What if we all were taught to think like designers and utilized design thinking more widely in our lives—both personal and professional? What if design was more inclusive and less guarded? What if we could learn to think and create fearlessly again? How would we even do that? Reworking a design process is no easy task, but the world is full of precedents and examples to draw from to make it more digestible. All we really need to do is look down every now and then. The best way to relearn fearless thinking and creativity is from children. Think about it: children are encouraged to play, imagine, create, destroy, question, and learn from the world around them constantly in hopes they will one day understand, inhabit, and shape it somewhat successfully. The toys and games they play with help facilitate these methods of thinking through play—why do we have to toss them aside when we grow old? Children don’t think about the scope of possibility, bottom lines, or deadlines. Children think without laws and reason—a great place to start as a designer. Instead of framing our problems around what we can’t do, afford, solve, etc. what if we thought of the most radical and disruptive ideas then found a way to bring them to an achievable level? What if we weren’t afraid to question the norm or the status quo? I acknowledge the benefits of constraints, but must they be imposed so early on in the process of problem solving or design? We all must learn to think, and play, like children again when it comes to our design processes.

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO

When most people hear the word “design” they tend to get a little uneasy, but what if I told you we are all designers? Simply put, a designer is just someone who creates, produces, or plans something. A designer is just looking to solve a problem creatively. On some level, we have all had to think like a designer in our lives or utilize creative problem solving skills. Picking an outfit in the morning, making a meal, or even that game of Tetris you play trying to fit everything you need to pack for a trip into a bag or car. While we all might not be formally trained designers, we all have the ability to make space for creative thinking. To push it further, however, we must learn to be more daring.

PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÃ&#x2018;O

Bibliography

n.d. A Parent and Advocates Guide to Anji Play. Accessed February 10, 2020. http://www. anjiplay.com/guide. Berecz, Ágnes. 2020. “Consumed by Play: The Politics of the Transformable Work of Art.” In Multiplied: Edition Mat and the Transformable Work of Art, 1959-1965, by Meredith Malone. St. Louis, Missouri: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Berthelsen, Chris. 2015. “The City of Children.” In Tokyo Totem: A Guide to Tokyo. Tokyo: Flick Studio. 2019. Abstract: The Art of Design S2E4 “Cas Holman: Design for Play”. Directed by Scott Dadich. 2014. Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary. Directed by Kief Davidson Daniel Junge. Lange, Alexandra. n.d. Serious Fun. Accessed February 10, 2020. https://www.hermanmiller. com/stories/why-magazine/serious-fun/.

n.d. Play Prompts. Accessed February 10, 2020. https://www.rigamajig.com/play-prompts/. Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman. 2010. “The Creativity Crisis.” The Daily Beast, July 10. Spiegel, Alex. 2008. Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control. February 28. Accessed February 10, 2020. npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288&ps=bb1. 2012. When art meets play, who wins? Tim Gill. October 18. Accessed February 10, 2020. https://rethinkingchildhood.com/2012/10/18/art-play-who-wins/. Zeisel, Eva. 2001. The playful search for beauty. February. Accessed February 2020. https:// www.ted.com/talks/eva_zeisel_the_playful_search_for_beauty.

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NAEYC. n.d. How Play Connects to Learning. Accessed February 10, 2020. https://www.naeyc. org/resources/topics/play.

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PLAY AS PROCESS | NOAH TREVIÑO DESIGNED BY NOAH TREVIÑO | @NRT.DES ARCHITECTURE CAPSTONE SP20 @ SAM FOX SCHOOL HEADER: BALLAST 40PT BODY: IBM PLEX SANS 10PT MARGINALIA: IBM PLEX SANS 6PT