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AMBER BRAVO: It's a little bit like, I guess,
when you've trained your brain to sort of look
at the visual or material world critically,
you can't really turn it off.
ALEXANDRA LANGE: Yeah.
AMBER BRAVO: So was there, like, a level
when you became a mom that suddenly, you were
exposed to all of this stuff.
And then you couldn't stop thinking about it
from a critical lens or?
ALEXANDRA LANGE: Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
Basically, I was a design critic.
And then I became a mom.
And as you say, I couldn't turn it off.
My husband's an architect too.
So we got, like, five different sets of blocks as gifts
when my son was born.
And I couldn't help thinking, how
is this one different than that one?
Like what is this one supposed to teach as opposed
to that one?
Is there a difference or is it just marketing?
AMBER BRAVO: One thing that I thought was interesting,
too, is the sort of parallel between these like, basically,
development or engineering programs for younger children
and sort of the things that they're adopting from,
like block play and LEGO and how they're
using that to teach basic writing scripts
and understanding how you make thing--
you manipulate an object.
ALEXANDRA LANGE: Yeah, no.
It was really interesting to me because I
did a lot of the research on blocks and LEGOs
before I came to the kind of digital realm
because that just made sense chronologically.
And it struck me that people talk
about physical play and digital play
as somehow being in conflict.
But in fact, I think that digital play
and digital learning really rests
on a foundation of this physical play, of block play,
because that has become almost a universal language
of childhood.
So the creators of programs like Scratch and ScratchJR
can assume a familiarity with little plastic pieces clicking
together that, then, they can use as their interface.
AMBER BRAVO: You bring up a really great point
with the playground sort of exhausting
the interest of a child at a certain age
because they're just developmentally past that.
But I think that the designing for children, it
seems like, there's a really interesting connection
between accessibility, too.
There's a whole section where you kind of talk about that.
ALEXANDRA LANGE: I was lucky enough
to go and visit the Adaptive Design Associates, which
is in Manhattan, which is run by a woman named Alex Truesdell.
And she basically has a cardboard workshop
where they create furniture and furniture inserts to help
children with disabilities live life with everyone else,
essentially, like be in a mainstream class, et cetera.
Even if they can't sit up straight,
she will help to design and create
a cardboard insert for a school chair
that supports their back more or different kinds of high chairs,
seats that rock slightly.
So if a child or an adult is fidgety,
they can kind of take care of their need
to move while still performing a task.
She really sees it all as a continuum of ability.
And everyone should have-- everyone
has the right to participate, like, as fully as possible.
And sometimes, it is just a physical insert
that makes the difference between being alone,
like not being able to leave your house,
and being able to participate in a classroom.
And she does all of this with cardboard.
Cardboard is this amazing adaptive material
because you can cut it quite easily.
It's not that expensive, but once you
glue it together and kind of laminate it,
it's totally sturdy and will last for years.
I also found that there was this whole kind of literature
around what's called cardboard carpentry that
goes back farther.
Alex Truesdell founded the ADA in the 1980s.
But in the 1960s and '70s, there was already this movement
around furniture made of cardboard
for much the same reasons, that it
was kind of easy to work with.
It was inexpensive.
And you could make something that would only
last for a little while, a sort of temporary structure
in your home that-- and that was fine.
Now, I happen to think that the sharing economy actually
works best for parents.
Like almost everything that I've had for my kids,
I passed on to somebody else.
If I could have had a cardboard car seat, which actually
is in one of the cardboard carpentry books, a cardboard
car seat or a cardboard high chair that then, like,
I laminated an extra piece on or cut a piece off from year
to year, I would have been so happy with that.
And really, I mean, it's an idea about how you're
making furniture, how you're helping
people live in the world, that is
wonder-- is literally adaptive.
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