commercial · retail
open tinkers.
Malta’s first high-street science shop — an ash-veneered, laser-cut ceiling and furniture at a child’s scale.
- client
- open tinkers
- location
- spinola park, st julian’s
- year
- 2017
- sector
- commercial · retail
- system
- laser-cut ash-veneered ceiling · child-scale furniture
- made by
- matter make
the project
the project
Open Tinkers was Malta’s first high-street science shop, started by Steve De Micoli of Matter Make at the busy entrance to Spinola Park, St Julian’s. The idea was to bring STEAM learning out onto the street, where people could see it and have a go. The shop was small and narrow, so the front did the talking: a big window framing a laser-cut ceiling of ash-veneered MDF that drew people in.
We designed everything inside. A modular shelving system ran along the walls for as much storage as the space allowed, and the furniture was built at a child’s height. A table in the middle hosted live demos and workshops, so you could get your hands on things. The shelves held coding, robotics, art and engineering, each product picked to make someone curious.
It was a shop, and it was also an experiment: in learning anyone could walk into, in teaching led by design, and in giving a shopfront over to curiosity and play.
the diagrams
how it came together.
- 01the shop, exploded.the ceiling, the shelving and the furniture at a child’s height
- 02the ceiling, in ribs.
- 03the ceiling, panel by panel.the field split into lettered panels, for cutting and fixing
the drawing
how it was made
a shop at a child’s height.
- the ceiling does the talking.
Ash-veneered MDF, laser-cut in the workshop into one continuous field above the shop.
- furniture at their scale.
Counters and tables sized for the people the shop is for — the adults adapt.
- the kit that became a product.
The slotted display system drawn here grew into Rejig, now on the objects page.