Residency at Fantástica Carpintaria

During October and November 2024 I was in Vitória learning and co-creating at Fantástica Carpintaria.

I had the chance to deepen my understanding of the project’s operation, its relationship with the surrounding communities, past, present and futures, challenges and successes.

I also developed intuition about the equipment, material and building techniques through experimentations and prototypes.

Thank you very much for the opportunity, welcoming, attention and energy!

Cidade Quintal

Cidade Quintal (Yard City) is an organization that since 2016 is dedicated to transform spaces and to catalyse positive actions throughout the city. Their work is on the field of design and participatory urbanism to strengthen communities and enhance coexistence.

www.cidadequintal.com.br

A Fantástica Carpintaria

A Fantástica Carpintaria (Fantastic Carpentry) is a small scale circular design and creative recycling laboratory. Created in 2020 to solve sustainability dilemmas and project innovation for Cidade Quintal, the lab became a space for recreation of materials and methodologies where it promotes circularity and dreaming of futures with a more responsible consumption of resources.

www.cidadequintal.com.br/lab

 

The House

The Fantástica Carpintaria’s is located in an old but renovated house in the historic center of Vitória, a place that is home of a vibrant community of residents, social and cultural actors, commerce, referential samba place and amongst other things, a creative territory.

 

Precious Plastic

Global network of plastic recycling laboratories based on the sharing of open technologies that push other laboratories around the world.

www.preciousplastic.com

Context and Inspiration

The main reason for my visit to Vitória was my father’s passing. He was a physical education teacher in many neighborhoods of Serra, being coordinator of one of them. With my father I learned to value and celebrate the mental, body and civic development of children and young people in a playful and enjoyable way. In his tribute I decided to propose a residency around play.

Despite my experience being on education and technology, I often think the latter receives excessive attention and is seen as the essence of solutions (technocentrism). In referential books like Mindstorms and Lifelong Kindergarten the discourse about creativity, expressivity, agency and self image are inspiring but are always related to the use of computers and digital tools.

My intention was to think of a constructionism that could be possible beyond the computer, resilient and responsible with its residual artifacts. In a way closer to themes approached by Jay Silver in his PhD thesis, where he proposes that the world is already a construction kit.

More than an object to be seen as a solution, I proposed to think of a play to think of solutions: Something that catalyses a change in the way one sees the worlds (natural, synthetic and residual) before seen as scarce and disposable to being seen as rich and constructive.

Prototypes and Results

During the residency I worked on prototypes for 3 ideas, one of which developed and was embraced by the Fantástica Carpintaria team.

Construction Kit

My first idea was to produce construction blocks themed with architectural elements of the historic center and other peripheral neighborhoods. The main idea behind those blocks was abundance of material and possibilities, allowing construction, reproduction, creation and recreation of a diverse range of games and play.

Grid Beam

The second idea was to develop applications around the “Grid Beam” system. This system is simple (and perhaps obvious) where the standardization of connections and modularity allows creative freedom similar to other construction kits (Knes, Lego, Meccano, etc). But different from these other toys, “Grid Beam” works on a miniature, human and structural scale. It’s also easy to produce the pieces with simple tools and even without electricity, besides the possibility of using many types of material like wood, metal and plastic!

Board Game

The third idea (the one that developed further) was a border matching game like Tetravex, dominoes and Carcassone.

The game has elements that came up in striking ways during the residency: The territory, circular and non-circular economies, the plastic cycle and the relationship between the many sectors that play a role in this cycle.

After 4 iterations the final prototype was a set of 44 tiles that have a mix of three resources: Paths, water and establishments. The intention was to create tiles that allowed for a wide range of play with the minimum prerequisites but that were capable of generating reflections and play dynamics with high levels of complexity (low floor, wide walls, high ceiling).

By themselves or in turns and in its most basic form, the players place the tiles one by one in a way that the resources on the tile border match the neighboring tiles. This rule creates a generative game where it’s unlikely to have 2 equal territories.

When placing a tile that has an establishment as a resource, the player also places a token that represents a city element. The initial library of city elements was created from my own experience but it’s very important that, if possible, players could create their own tokens with elements of their own experiences: What is abundant, what is scarce, what is good, what is bad, what exists already and what each one dreams of.

The random properties of this game brings up the reality of many communities that live in a territory that was not planned to begin with and the difficulties and possibilities of change.

The combination of generative city and city elements that cross the idea of “positive and negative” makes emergent a city where everything is possible and it’s often surprising. It naturally evokes a spontaneous emotional response about the placement and relationships between elements and their surroundings as much as it asks for adjustments and changes.

This is the main point for me: A serious political discussion about the city during a playful and joyful moment where children, young people and adults from different contexts can participate at the same time.

"(...) the essence of politics: the ability to reflect consciously on different directions one's society could take, and to make explicit arguments why it should take one path rather than another."

Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

At the end of the residency we played a few matches of the game that felt like a success on my desire of creating an object to facilitate and foster this discussion: An object to think with.

murilopolese@gmail.com / www.murilopolese.com