Reusable festival stalls made from giant Tinker Toys

An architecture firm has developed a system for creating reusable festival stalls that can be designed in more than 1,000 ways

Spotted: You may have seen images of the aftermath of trade fairs – these can resemble waste dumps, with the remnants of stalls often dismantled and thrown away. Vendors rarely reuse their stalls, because the sizes and design tend to vary by event. Now, architectural studio Studio Symbiosis has developed an alternative to throwing away old stalls – a reusable structure called Plexus that can be reconfigured in more than 1,000 different ways.

Plexus is designed a bit like classic tinker toys, with nodes and connectors that let stall designers create almost endless variations of shapes and sizes, including adapting to non-standard stall sizes and a differentiated product range. The adaptable system can also be flat packed, for easier transportation with less waste.

To create the system, a prototype was designed using MDF and executed as part of a five-day design workshop held in Lucknow, Northern India. It would, however, be possible for the system to be made from a variety of materials, including wood.

Britta Knobel Gupta and Amit Gupta, Founding Partners of Studio Symbiosis have described the system as, “an intricate network, whereby a series of simple components, based on aggregation principles, can result in a new design of the display booth for every exhibition, and also a new brand image.” They also point out that Plexus was designed as a universal model, adding that Plexus is “designed to construct the complexity of natural systems displayed in a diverse naturally occurring phenomena.”

Architects are playing an increasing role in improving sustainability, and firms are becoming more and more creative in how they approach this.  Recent architectural innovations in sustainability have included an underground building designed for use with contaminated land and the use of ancient techniques in modern buildings.

Explore more: Architecture & Design Innovations | Sustainability Innovations