Close Up blends a love of nature and art in an art-lab table that provides a collaborative learning experience by stimulating children’s curiosity when drawing. With pleasant organic qualities, this art-lab table has an inviting light feature that facilitates tracing, sketching and observation. Even more attractive, Close Up has built-in portable containers for gathering samples such as bugs and leaves. A magnification lens is embedded in each container’s lid giving youngsters the chance to get a closer look at their finds. By placing the containers back on the table, kids can explore, and display their findings while learning to draw from nature and encouraging social interaction.
Where the hell was this when I was a kid? Surely this beats the Playschool kitchen I had. In fact this comes pretty close to my Speak-and-Spell, and Teddy Ruxpin in terms of uber awesomeness. If kids everywhere had toys/tools like this to push their imagination and natural exploratory nature, we might be in for a better, brighter future.
Designer: Carolina Peña Villarreal
Photographs by Steve Tilley & Carolina Pena
