Creative Wooden Creatures: A New Wave of Sustainable Play

Designer Hakan Gürsu's Award-Winning Toy Kit Fosters Creativity and Environmental Awareness

The Creative Wooden Creatures kit is designed for children above the age of five. It is a universal toy that enables children from different cultural backgrounds to learn about and discover animals of land and sea while also designing their own creatures. The challenge was to design a toy kit that offers unlimited possibilities for building creatures with simple, organic forms that foster creativity and perception of aesthetics. The result is a toy kit that is environmentally friendly, has the potential to become a classic, and is both entertaining and educative.

The design of the toy aims to foster creativity while offering entertainment with sustainable materials. Created with simple organic forms without any sharp angles, the pieces fit comfortably in a child's hand. The toy improves motor skills, memory, imagination, and basic shape recognition abilities, and also fosters love and care for animals. Abstract shaped blocks enable children to create both real and fictional creatures with unlimited 3D form and character generation.

The Creative Wooden Creatures toy kit offers three sets; creatures of land, sea, and amphibians. Each set offers around 10-12 types of defined creatures and 72 pieces. Parts and pieces are interchangeable and flutes are made in a way that creatures with variously numbered legs can be made easily. The toy kit delivers an explorative play experience with limitless creation and transformation possibilities and aims to have a long lifespan.

Material selection for Creative Wooden Creatures is made carefully with sustainability in mind. Chosen materials are all natural and 100% recyclable. Body parts are made of wooden blocks that are obtained from waste pieces of industrial wood processing. Ropes used for arms and legs are made of cotton and have a metal wire inside to allow shaping. Eye pieces are painted with water-based acrylic paint for wood. Hardwood blocks are numeric machine processed, paraffin waxed for water repellency.

The kit consists of body pieces, arm/leg pieces, and eye pieces. For body parts, maximum dimensions are 74 x 60 x 37 mm and minimum dimensions are 40 x 40 x 10 millimeters. Cotton rope parts that are used for arms and legs are maximum 200 mm and minimum 100 millimeters in length. Eye pieces are cylindrical and have a radius of 3.25 mm and are 17 mm in length.

The Creative Wooden Creatures kit is not just a toy; it's a tool for learning, creativity, and environmental awareness. It's a testament to the power of design to create products that are not only functional and enjoyable but also beneficial to society. This is the kind of innovation that deserves recognition, and it's no surprise that it has been awarded the prestigious Platinum A' Design Award.