Russell Barton

How did I come up with a design? When I opened the box, I found a neatly packaged LEGO racer (ages 6-10 by the way). It provided the theme of a race track — I immediately saw it as a perfect giant monument/motif at the track. Of course to use it for that I could not open it. That also seemed like an interesting feature — almost like a closed sarcophagus — the viewer knows that it contains interesting related content.

How did I come up with a design? When I opened the box, I found a neatly packaged LEGO racer (ages 6-10 by the way). It provided the theme of a race track — I immediately saw it as a perfect giant monument/motif at the track. Of course to use it for that I could not open it. That also seemed like an interesting feature — almost like a closed sarcophagus — the viewer knows that it contains interesting related content.

The concepts came pretty quickly: LEGO Car → race track, foam sheets → stands, and the stands immediately led to two new ideas for track structure: color coded sections (who knows where N S E and W are???) where the seats are the section color, and steeply stacked stands, to enclose the noise (a key feature) and bring all close to the action (like an opera house).

Yes the bricolage worked — the limited supply of materials was critical to idea generation. Once the role of the LEGO box was fixed, the pipe cleaners, rod, clips and rubber bands assembled themselves in my mind into a giant mobile: the rod as the pivot, held by the two paper clips via rubber bands to the box, and the pipe cleaners shaped (using the foam ball) into cups to catch the wind. The mobile would provide a motion motif to complement the racer box and car profile. All of the above led me to think that I was designing toward an experience more than the artifact itself.

So it was box + rod + clips + pipe cleaners → wind-driven pinwheel/mobile, with fabrication enabled by the foam ball. In the end, the foam ball was only needed for the idea — I lost it (there was a 3- year old in the house) and so used a ping pong ball instead.

This all happened within maybe 5 minutes. The fabrication details came more slowly and as the project progressed. In summary the issues were:

How to make curved stands: hold the first foam sheet up to a glass- topped round table and mark the edge, sliding the sheet further under but parallel, mark it again.

How to make the stand support: I used the bricolage box, cutting off one side, then playing with a piece of paper to see how I wanted the cardboard cutouts to stand up to hold the stands at an angle. I then used a paper pattern to mark the box and cut the supports (with a razor blade).

How to make the racing fans (people): at first I thought of clay. Too much work. Then I rationalized that the people were not a part of the design, but only a means to communicate the design intent — much like this note. So I \'wrote\' this information into the stands using colored markers.

How to make the track: I used the manila folder that was in my box. I did take Sam\'s leeway and use one item not included in my box — a black marker to \'create\' the track surface. Again, I could have used clay, but too much work. A blue clay track would have been great — and I could have banked it easily, and it would have added to the \'colorful track\' theme.

And off I went. A few more assembly issues not worth mentioning. It is productive to think about design while doing it, I think. An interesting questions is, to do this design right, what disciplines would you want to participate?