Another directive of this project is finding different ways to increase the accessibility to, and to spread the knowledge we aquire in the process of our research. Inventorics is located at the Institute of Art Science and Art Education after all.

While working on physical studies with 3d-printed bike-frames the idea to develop this into a toy construction kit evolved quite naturally…

…and coincidentally the 3d printing platform printables.com was having a “Building Block” contest which presented us with the best opportunity to go forward. Unfortunately we didn’t win any of the awards, but you can download the files here and print your own construction toy kit anyways!

As a result of our digital studies with various bike frame types and after a deep dive into bike-frame geometry we learned that in most bikes the head and seat tubes are not parallel – contrary to our first test with an overidealized frame.

That inspired 3 difficulty versions:

BEGINNER:
Head and seat-tubes are all parallel and the rear triangle is the same for all bicycles, that makes it easier to build larger modules, which then can be assembled into larger structures.

ADVANCED:
Head and seat-tubes are still parallel but the rear triangles vary. Now it gets more difficult to build regular patterns.

EXPERT:
Welcome to (the almost) real world. All bikes vary slightly in their dimensions between each other but only in a limited range, topologically they are still the same. The higher the similarity between frames, the more regular the final structure will be – or the opposite. You decide: do you enjoy order or rather embrace chaos?

Incidently the first field test has also shown, that evidently Playmobil is roughly in the scale of 1:10.

Playfully engaging the human brain in thinking in non-orthoganal patterns (beyond the cartesian block shape) should increase the capacity for 3 dimensional imagination and creativity.