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Notable

Open Design Award

Core77 Design Awards 2016

Results Announced for Community Choice Prize See All Winners

Fort Boards - Custom Fort Builder

Fort Boards is a custom fort building kit that allows kids to play inside of their own creations. Kids aged five and up can build nearly anything that their imagination can come up with: a spaceship that can take them to the moon, a boat to sail on the high seas, or an igloo to withstand the arctic weather. Kids can get even more creative when graphic card inserts are added to make their forts look like they're made of wood, metal or stone. Kids can also flip the graphic cards over to draw and color on their forts. This open-ended play helps develop children's imagination, creativity and spatial reasoning skills. Parents love Fort Boards because all parts nest together for compact storage when not in use. Indoors or outside, with Fort Boards, the building possibilities are as endless as kid's imaginations.

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Promoting Open-Ended Play with Fort Boards

In today's society, kids have fewer opportunities for unsupervised experiences. However, even if they're stuck in the house or backyard, a fort instantly gives a child the ability to be transported to another world full of adventure. Fort Boards is an open-ended construction set that fosters imagination and creativity while giving kids a sense of independence.

Unleashing Exploration

Fort Boards was designed to be easily learned and used by kids age 5 and up, but younger children also love playing in Fort Boards forts.

· Simple visualization:Much like home building, it's hard to visualize a house's final shape when it's only timber framing. But when kids construct a home out of solid material (like a brick, for instance), they see exactly what they are building, as they build it. With Fort Boards, it's easy for kids to be creative as they build because and there is no secondary product needed (such as a fabric covering) to reveal the design.

· Snap in the angle: When kids connect two Board parts together, they can rotate them together to form the desired angle and add a Connector part to solidify the two Boards at a precise angle.

· Uniform parts: Since there are only two parts (the Board and the Connector), the right parts are always at hand. Six different angles can be created with just those two parts and easy to understand symbols show how to create angles at either 180°, 90°, 45°, or 30°.

Infinitely Customizable

Nearly any structure that kids can visualize can be built with Fort Boards.

· Creative ideas: We've observed children design unique creations from their own imagination, such as wearable robot armor, pet dogs, and ice castles.

· Fort Boarding School: On the FortBoards.com website, printable directions show how to build a house, castle, submarine, car and many other forts.

· Adding decorations: Each board has tabs to hold Design Cards that transform the exteriors to look like metal, stone or wood. Flipping over the cards displays a white surface for kids to draw their own custom designs.

· Working hinges: The Fort Boards design allows for hinge-like movement to create working doors, window shutters and secret hatches in forts.

Promoting Discovery

Hard-to-teach skills are unknowingly learned when building with Fort Boards.

· Spatial reasoning: By visualizing a three-dimensional structure, building it, and then seeing it from the inside and outside, spatial reasoning skills are developed.

· Creativity and imagination: We've been surprised by what kinds of designs kids are coming up with. User testing at children's museums also revealed that parents—especially Dads—also love building with their kids.

· Structural engineering: When their fort starts to sag or break apart, kids automatically learn to add some additional support pieces or change the design of their fort.

As Timeless As Forts

Designing to be a lightweight yet durable product, Fort Boards hopes to become a timeless toy that grows up with children and opens up endless design possibilities for young builders everywhere.

Jury Commentary
The panel really loved this project, specifically the size of the project. Big, modular systems for kids to build is a big win!
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Results Announced for Community Choice Prize See All Winners
  • Honoree

    August Graube

  • Client

    Fort Boards

  • Project Team

    August Graube - Founder & Designer

  • Category

    Open Design

  • View More Information
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Open Design Award See All Honorees

Core77 Design Awards 2016

  • Winner

    Carvey - 3D carving machine

    By MNML

  • Runner Up

    TMA-2 Modular Headphone System

    By Kilo

  • Notable

    Lux the principled block 

    By Heather and Mike Acerra

  • Student Winner

    Toy Box

    By James Self (supervisor), Subin Kim, Haemin Lee, Sumin Lee & Kido Chang

See All Honorees

Core77 Design Awards 2016

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  • Open Design
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  • Visual Communication
 
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