Concave-Convex Mortise and Tenon Blocks

Press Kit

Unique Properties

The tenon and mortise building blocks are 211 pieces in total, extracted from the traditional Chinese tenon and mortise structure and simplified into 30 simple tenons and mortises (such as square dovetail, T-shaped tenon, etc.) suitable for young children to play. The tenon and mortise are made of dark black walnut wood and light beech wood, respectively. In the process of finding partners for each tenon, children can learn the wisdom of the ancients.

Dimensions & Packaging

Package size: 220mm*195mm*280mm,
Material: Beech, Black Walnut

Tags

Traditional culture, mortise and tenon structure, educational toys, preschool children

Production Technology

Woodworking machine carving and manual detail processing

Design Challenge

This toy has high requirements for the accuracy of mortise and tenon joint clearance. The joint between mortise and tenon cannot be too loose or too tight. The manual polishing process requires more costs.

Project Duration

Start in September 2022 and end in March 2023，Shanghai

Operation Flow

This set of building blocks simplifies the complicated details of traditional mortise and tenon in the design scheme, and simplifies 30 kinds of mortise and tenon structures as the main building source. The design has three levels of difficulty: basic version, advanced and high-level version.
1）The basic version is aimed at children over 18-month-old, finding the corresponding mortise and tenon for each color, understanding the mortise and tenon structure, and exercising the ability to solve problems;2）Based on the cognition of the mortise and tenon structure, the advanced version is suitable for children over 3 years old to play. With the specific material form as a reference, by assembling two or more basic mortise and tenon, the combination can be built into specific forms such as butterflies, sun, rockets, chairs, etc., to enhance children's graphic imagination and creativity;3）The high-level version is based on the mortise and tenon structure, and focuses on the modular design of building specific material forms, such as the construction of micro-architecture scenes, the construction of story theme background and other complex large-scale space construction, which improves children's spatial imagination and logical reasoning ability, and is suitable for children over 6 years old to challenge.

Research

Mortise and tenon, it is a main structural method of traditional Chinese architecture, furniture and other instruments. It is a connection method combining concave-convex parts on the two components. The protruding part is called tenon (or tenon); The recessed part is called mortise (or mortise, mortise). The utility model is characterized in that the nail is not used on the object, and the mortise and tenon are used to reinforce the object.

Inspiration

The project takes Luban lock as the design source, and obtains new inspiration from the mortise and tenon structure of Chinese traditional culture. Luban lock is difficult to remove and build for the children under the age of 6 .Therefore, this project attempts to design by simplifying the mortise and tenon structure, combining mortise and tenon with building blocks. The goal is to encourage children over 1 year old to complete the free assembly of simple mortise and tenon.

Image Credits

Xiaoyang Feng
Huan Liu
Sha Yang

Patents

Shanghai Art and Design Academy

Colors of Concave-Convex Mortise and Tenon Blocks