Friendly Research

Continuing our investigation of how to make a wall friendly, the wall is brightly colored to stand out, dramatically slopes and shifts opacities for more attention, and then has playful openings to further arouse interest and curiosity. The wall serves as a social connector while balancing moments for privacy, and is the “tree trunk” off of which branches various healthy and joyful opportunities for leisure and sitting including swings and hammocks, against ropes, and under a pool noodle fort. The wall also embeds other activities such as calisthenics, backgammon, and a stage.  

Building off existing Friendly research, FW v002 tests 2 new spatial strategies to promote Friendlyness. 

Objective 1: Bring more functional outputs - connection, movement, creative expression/individual autonomy, and play - into the physical design itself.

Strategic Response: Use a silly material - pool noodles - to create a flowing wall that sways with the wind as well as can be lifted up onto the monkey bars to function as a canopy. The opaque part of the wall has a playful opening that can also be removed from the wall and function as a canopy for dogs as well. The dog canopy doubles as a backgammon table and is best situated underneath the human dimensions pool noodle canopy. 

Takeaway: FORTS ARE AWESOME!!! We stumbled upon the amazingness of forts as an ideal spatial element to inspire our inner child. It is so fun and relaxing below the fort, not to mention it’s an awesome place to work for real and put in the work on the backgammon table for extra real. And also, it’s empowering for people to be able to switch up their spatial environments to their pleasing each time they are using the design. 

Objective 2: Holistic movement, learning from Monkeys, and asymmetrical, multi-textured fitness equipment. We are interested in helping people become better movers! Our primal ancestors are incredible movers, and there environments are never perfectly symmetrical, so we wanted to integrate their conditions into our own fitness practice. 

Strategic response: Have horizontal bars (pull up bars) and monkey bars slant at different angles and use different materials (metal and rope). 

Takeaway: Asymmetrical fitness equipment is functional great and aesthetically fun! We think it’s a great complement to more traditional, symmetrical fitness instruments. 

Matilda the Wallopy is seriously silly, oh and also we engraved happy faces in all the tabs connecting the various parts of the design :)