Activity Floor

Deyan Sudjic: Badoiiing game, 2012 winner of the museum’s Design Ventura competition for 13-16 year-old D&T students.

"Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." While Fuller’s ultimate goal was audacious, the idea of a real-time simulation in the ‘60s, accessible to before widespread access to computing, was just somewhat less ambitious. Fuller’s game—so-called to be accessible to everyone—was a further expansion of his Spaceship Earth philosophy, and is currently being utilized as a model by the O.S. Earth Institute. (Pictured: Bucky's Time cover from 1964.)

Natural wood trim—as opposed to laminate—is gaining steam in luxury car interiors. Various veneers are stores in a carefully monitored humidor before they're applied to models for armrests or dashboard and door details.

Here are some of the seat patterns for the various parts. Unlike a lounge chair or sofa found in your living room, this chair is made from many separate components, each positioned to optimize the piece.

The seatmaker sculpts a form out out of the foam. The more dense foam offers rigid support while the less dense sections conform more to a driver's body.

Seating is a large component of car interiors and evaluated on comfort, looks, and functionality. Very specific compositions of foam exist underneath the surface. The different densities create the support and comfort that's needed to make quick trips around town and long road trips equally enjoyable. Here's an example of the different foams in a seat.

Here's an example of all various wood accents one might see within a car. After the shape is contoured and refined by the designers and woodworkers—the same way as the steering wheel stitch is—it's then ok'd for production. This is just a glimpse of what goes into three components and similar processes occur for other parts.

These hand painted wooden balls make Bocce, a game with roots going all the way back to the Roman Empire, an excellent contemporary pastime for children and adults alike.

Anna: Fontspotting Flashcards Ok, we're all magazine typeface lovers here, and this game accentuates our mad font skills. Fontspotting is a flashcard game you can download for free that tests your knowledge of typeface recognition. Created by designers Dustin de Souza and Jessica Witt for their own typographic memory testing, they decided to share it with the rest of us word geeks.

Inspirational spaces

After the foam configutation is set, the seat is upholstered and assembled.

The color, texture, and grain of a piece of leather is taken into account for upholstering an interior. Each car GM produces needs to be consistent and uniform in look and customization options. For example, if a buyer sees a caramel leather in a showroom car and wants it in their own, it needs to look the same. The studio makes sure that tanneries will be able to provide the right shade for a piece of leather and will be able to reproduce that on a large scale.

British artist Hannah Sawtell and technologist Avi Flombaum created sawbaum.com, where users can create visual collages using multiple vine streams. "We wanted it to look like a visual comic book, with overlapping panels," said Flombaum. "And we wanted it to be fun!" Photo courtesy Rhizome.

Sally challenges Gibson to a game of backgammon in their second-floor living area.

An outbuilding on the opposite side of the property is used as a game room.

AKIKO PENTAQUE BOCCE GAME SET A beautifully designed version of the classic lawn game, bocce, the Akiko Petanque set includes a set of six chrome bocce balls and a teak box for storing and carrying the game. The box has a hinged cover with a rectangular cut out, so the teak handle can be used when the box is closed. A collaboration between Danish designer Hans Thyge and Japanese designer Akiko Kuwahata, this set can be used to play, or can be set on a bookcase or table as a distinctive display piece.

A show-stopper at this year’s Dwell on Design, the Iconic Architecture Card Game is a set of cards that features the greatest modern architectural icons separated into seven groups including events, house, tower, culture, religion, housing, and museum. Including 44 black and white cards, the game spans architecture all over the world that have been carefully selected because of their diversity, architectural aspects, technical details, and cultural value.

Bocce by Fredericks & Mae, $320 Bocce, a lawn game whose lineage can be traced to the Roman Empire, is modernized with this hand-painted set by a Brooklyn studio.

Poster for the Original Pong Arcade Game Part of the Digital Archeology portion of the exhibition which looks to the past of digital technologies, this vintage advertisement just hints at the possibilities and potential of gaming technology. Image courtesy of the Barbican

For example, a designer specifies a certain stitch pattern. A sewer then creates the same pattern by hand giving feedback on reproducability. If it's too complex, he or she will offer feedback to the designer; the designer then takes another stab at the stitch's look. The back and forth happens until the detail is refined and meets the aesthetic standards and manufacturing capabilities at GM.

The automotive design process at General Motors involves countelss talented people from ideation to production. After designers come up with ideas for interior and exterior styling—think: the shape of seats, the contouring of a console, the overall look and feel of a cabin—craftspeople create life-sized prototypes at the Interiors and Exteriors Studio. They evaluate the design to see if it's something that can be produced on a large scale given the tools and machinery that's readily available. Even the most minute stitch.

There are ping-pong tables, and then there is the You and Me Ping-Pong Table from RS Barcelona. This finely crafted table is a departure from typical ping-pong tables—it is made of steel and high density HPL, and is supported by elegant iroko wood legs. For indoor and outdoor use, this ping-pong table is as much an elegant furnishing as it is a game.

Big-Game designed these plastic mesh laundry baskets for the company.

The Iconic Architecture Card Game is a set of cards that feature the greatest modern architectural icons that are separated into seven groups including events, house, tower, culture, religion, housing, museum. Including 44 black and white cards, the game spans architecture all over the world that have been carefully selected because of their diversity, architectural aspects, technical details, and cultural value. Each card is also selected because it can be easily identified by fans of modern architecture. The deck is unified by its simple drawings, typography, and bold black and white backings.

Jeffrey Kipnis and Stephen Turk's Figure Ground Game exhibition was featured at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles in early 2014.

Having a lawn game at your party is a great way to keep guests entertained. A beautifully designed version of the classic lawn game, Pétanque—a French version of Italy's bocce—the Akiko Petanque set includes a set of six chrome boule balls and a target ball, packaged in a teak box for storing and carrying the game.

An impromptu cricket game occupies locals in Navi Mumbai.

When not surfing, Lloyd-Butler and his son John repose in the new addition over a game of backgammon.

Commissioned as part of the popular Chinese reality television show Beautiful House, Beijing–based studio Evolution Design Architects was given a budget of 600,000 RMB (approximately $87,965 USD) for construction and interior design, as well as just two months to complete the transformation.

Illustration via drawastickman.com.

Hide&Seek Game. Location of the windows and their size is not designer’s imagination.