Project: Activity Blocks (Aktyviosios kaladėlės) educational building blocks children

Created: 2013–2019

Manufacturer: Beleduc, GmbH (Germany)

This wooden building block set, originally known by the name Upė and designed by Gintarė Černiauskaitė, earned her considerable attention in 2018, when her design won first prize at the Kids Design Awards competition in Germany. Černiauskaitė (b. 1991) began developing this idea for a multipurpose game in 2013, when she was given a study assignment to create a new font and transform it into a three-dimensional object. As she experimented with wooden circles, semicircles, and bricks, Černiauskaitė created an educational game to help children read, write, and count. These blocks, made from beech wood and painted in seven semi-transparent colours, help develop children’s creativity as they build not only letters and numbers, but also heroes from their favourite stories and buildings from their own imagination. The building block set can be adapted for any language in the world.

Gintarė Černiauskaitė is a product designer, instructor, and design researcher. She completed her bachelor’s degree studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands in 2013, and received her master’s degree from the Department of Design at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, where since 2016 she continues to study for her doctorate degree in design. Since her bachelor’s degree programme days, Černiauskaitė has studied and experimented with designs for innovative casts. EXO is a series of 3D-printed casts which earned Černiauskaitė several prizes from the Good Design contest in Lithuania. Since 2005, she directs the Creatus design studio, teaches at Lithuanian higher education institutions, and participates in international design shows and conferences.

www.creatus.lt

Photo: Indrė Srėbaliūtė