Blocks

Furniture/Object

Plywood and Screws on Milk Crates

2025

Photo: Valentina Bello

The Blocks are standard square milk crates paired with an open-source cap I designed. Exhibited as a set of ten, Blocks invites the audience to freely rearrange them as various functional spaces and objects. They operate with the intention of adapting to various social situations; conversation, meditation, dance, gameplay and protest.

The Blocks where originally rolled out in tandem with a larger body of solo work, Internetted, a study on the creation of democratic spaces and nice internet political subcultures.

The Blocks were created to create space for various social situations, initially focusing on collaboration and the building of democratic spaces.

In order to see the Blocks at their fullest potential, they must be exhibited beyond the exhibition space; in public, in places of debate and collaboration, in places of worship and in places of protest.

The Blocks at their first activation, Parsons School of Design

The prototyping process was extensive-

First, it was debated that the entire structure would be built of Plywood, that was quickly nullified as there was worry regarding weight, cost and the accesibility of the open source approach to the design.

To visualize what a group of Blocks may look like together, I 3D printed a few as well as laser cut prototypes for the caps, constructed them and put them together to actively visualize different iterations for shapes and purposes.

Collaborators:

Zevin Acuña (Designer/Fabricator)
Vincenzo Pagnotta (Fabrication Consultant)
Owen Mosley (Conceptual Consultant)
Carolina Miñana (Conceptual/Fabrication Consultant)
Chloe Roush (Conceptual Consultant)
Valentina Bello (Select Photos)
Ally Kessler (Conceptual Consultant)
Grayson Berry (Material Collection)
Yomna Mohamed (Material Collection)
Chloe Yiu (Material Collection)