For two decades Cas Holman has been designing play products and experiences that encourage exploration, imagination, and collaboration. Cas is the founder and principal designer at Heroes Will Rise, an independent toy company producing the award-winning Rigamajig building kits used in schools and public spaces around the world.
For the first time in Italy, this exhibition features original artwork, process sketches, scale models, and prototypes that give insight into Cas’s highly iterative, hands-on creative process. Technical practices are repeated over and over toward the path to product. Holman never assumes things are as they need to be – which is why her design process showcases the complex breaking down and rebuilding process of design.
Cas’s sketches may look messy, some almost indecipherable scribbles. When she’s sketching, her hand and brain are working together to imagine new ideas and variations. The sketches are not meant to communicate an idea, but to generate new ideas and help Cas visualize or understand what a design might become, or how it might work.
The prototypes, sketch models, and scale models are three-dimensional pieces meant to “figure out” how something works in relation to a child’s hands, body, or in most cases shown here, with the other pieces in the Rigamajig building system. They are made with readily available materials Cas keeps in her studio and often quickly assembled with cardboard, glue, tape, and the occasional 3D printed or laser-cut part when accuracy is needed. Included in the process, these prototypes are always played with and often given to children for “play-testing”. The most important part of Cas’s design process is play-testing and feedback from children.
Designed by Cas Holman.
