Pulptastic – Carlos Arturo Torres
There’s no dearth of cool things that can be done with Legos, but to use it to build prosthetics for children may just be the coolest one of all.
Working with Dario, an eight-year-old born without a right forearm due to a congenital condition, designer Carlos Torres was able to create a prosthetic arm that can be endlessly customized with Lego pieces. He’s called it: Iko.
The Iko prosthetic arm can be fitted with Lego bricks so that wearers can take the design of their own hand into their own hands.
Torres conceived of this idea to create “hackable” limbs during his six-month internship at Lego’s Future Lab. It was here that he observed the toy’s ability to cultivate social connections among children.
“My friends in psychology used to tell me that when a kid has a disability, he is not really aware of it until he faces society. That’s when they have a super rough encounter,” he said.
With Iko, kids can make their respective prosthetic arms whatever they want it to be, which would remove a lot of the social stigma that surrounds their disabilities.
In Dario’s case, it was a spaceship.
While in Bogota, one of Dario’s friends confided to Torres that he felt sorry for Dario because of the boy’s condition. Later, when Dario’s spaceship prosthetic arm went live, the same boy told Torres, “I want one of those” — a true testament to the transformational power of these Lego-customized limbs.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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