The Impossible Room · Connected Through Play

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The Impossible Room

Here’s one to get your creativity flowing as we head into the weekend. The conference has been eye opening and I’m ready for home but not quite yet. See what you can create this weekend.

We all know that rooms have rules.Floors go on the bottom. Doors belong in walls. Beds don’t usually hang from ceilings. What other rules do rooms have?

Today, one of those rules has to go. Your goal is to ask yourself what kind of room could I build if something about it were completely impossible?

Gather Your Gear: Pick Your Building World

Use a building system you already enjoy. This could be blocks, LEGO, or other building bricks. Maybe it’s magnetic tiles or dollhouse pieces. Think about toys, cardboard, paper, clay, or other craft supplies. Of course you can mix completely different things together.

Your room can fill a tabletop, fit on a tray or exist on a single piece of paper with a few objects added on top.

There is no special supply list. Build with your world, your way.

Steps

1. Break one rule. Decide what’s impossible about your room. Maybe gravity goes sideways. Furniture belongs on the ceiling. The door is underneath the bed. Everything is tiny except one enormous chair. Or invent a rule nobody else would think of.

2. Start building. Don’t worry about making a perfect miniature room. Build enough of your impossible world to start seeing the idea come alive.

3. Make the impossible obvious. Add, move, flip or rearrange things until your broken rule becomes part of the room. Change your mind whenever you want.

4. Somebody has to live here. Add a toy, figure, imaginary creature, finger character or simply pretend someone has arrived. Now play. Move through the room, use the strange furniture, climb the walls or discover what it’s like to live where your rule is normal.

5. Mess with the world. Turn the whole room around. Move the furniture. Add another character. Change something while someone else is playing. Or leave your impossible world exactly as it is and come back to it later.

Twist: New Rule!

Someone gets to introduce one more impossible rule.

Maybe everything suddenly floats. Nobody can touch the floor. The room has no corners. Every piece of furniture has switched jobs.

Keep the new rule, change it or make it even stranger.

This is your impossible world. You get the final say.

Change It Up

Explore It | Ages 3–6

Start with a few familiar building pieces and one wonderfully silly change. Put the bed on the wall. Make a door in the floor. Turn a chair upside down. Add a favorite toy and play in the strange little room together. Moving everything around may be more fun than finishing the room.

Challenge It | Ages 7–12

Choose a rule that changes how the whole room works. What happens if gravity pulls toward one wall? What if everything has to be reached without touching the floor? Build enough of the room to make the idea playable, then add characters and see what they do with the world you’ve created.

Own It | Ages 13–17

Make the room as clever, surreal or ridiculous as you want. Break several expectations, create your own logic or build around an inside joke. Use whatever medium fits your idea, from bricks and miniatures to mixed materials. Then hand the room to someone else and see what they do with the world you created.

What will you create?

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The Impossible Room