Cardboard has secured a residency at the Amazeum.
For the next six months, cardboard — typically limited to unglamorous uses — will be the star of the show at the museum’s new “Materials Lab.”
In the space, tools like laser engravers, hot glue guns, scissors and saws are available to visitors for open-ended crafting and discovery. All activities in the space will focus on one material at a time, starting with cardboard.
Meg Benedetti, tinkering manager for the museum, explained the concept behind the lab.
“There’s deep, deep learning and fluency of knowing one material that can happen if you limit your options. And so that’s what we’re kind of hoping, that people will see things in a new light,” Benedetti said. “They will test things. They will push their ideas further because they only have one material to work with, versus having everything.”
At a preview event for museum members Saturday, some projects made by children were already hanging on the exhibit walls. The museum team hopes creations will be left in the space so other guests can build on them.
“We are asking people: What if you didn’t just make something one-to-one?” Benedetti said. “What if you built onto somebody you don’t know, like a stranger?”
Instead of individual stations, the exhibit features large, communal tables designed to encourage sharing tools and conversation.
New prompts, challenges and tools will be introduced over time. In about six months, the Materials Lab will pivot to a different material that hasn’t been announced yet. The space is open during regular museum hours and is included with admission.
While the museum hosts traveling exhibits and refreshes displays periodically, the Materials Lab is the first permanent exhibit added in about ten years, according to Holland Hayden, the museum’s marketing & communications manager.
More changes are on the way at the museum. Construction is ongoing on a major expansion that will add exhibit space, a café and a dedicated early learning center. A “topping out” ceremony for the expansion was held in January, and the museum hopes to open the new spaces by the end of the year.
