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# Unruly Play
- URL: https://www.protein.xyz/unruly-play/
- Published: 2026-10-06T09:47:19.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-06T09:47:19.000Z
- Description: An interview with art and design studio Imagination of Things.
- Author: Protein
- Tags: Seeds

*Play is childish. Imagination doesn’t measure up to* [*rationality*](https://www.protein.xyz/the-stupid-report/)*. Exploration without an end goal can’t compete with clear KPIs. Data and logic are often glorified across many businesses and brands, but this rigid outlook places a ceiling on what’s possible, or even what's conceivable. Founded by Vitor Freire and Monique Grimord, the art and design studio* [*Imagination of Things*](https://www.imagination.ooo/?ref=protein.xyz) *is on a quest to smuggle play into unexpected places.* 

*Protein spoke with Freire and Grimord about play as permission to cross the threshold and discover new opportunities, but crucially how the most fruitful play often involves* [*friction*](https://www.protein.xyz/friction-forward/)*, theatre and challenge. It’s not all fun and games.* 

---

***P: How and when did you realise play is what you wanted to build your studio around?***

IOT: We met while working at Crispin Porter + Bogusky \[the American advertising agency founded in 1965\], and it was there, on a LEGO pitch, that we found the first spark of what would later become our studio. We were working in the innovation lab, coming up with weird and wild prototypes for the pitch, and the expression we used to introduce the concept was ‘the imagination of things’. That was almost 12 years ago, so play was at the centre of our practice long before our studio even existed. 

> Play is permission. To have new ideas. To question what's fixed. To rehearse change. 

It still took us some time to fully embrace this approach, and to feel confident enough to lead with play in how we present ourselves. Part of the challenge was that our view of play was more expansive than the usual picture of playgrounds and games. Part of it was simply confidence: backing play as a worthy method, as a lens, as a way of designing things. We used to avoid opening client conversations with the word play because we wanted to be taken seriously. Now we're unapologetic about it, and we bring play into the most serious rooms. Play is permission. To have new ideas. To question what's fixed. To rehearse change. 

> People forget what a playground actually involves: friction, drama, learning your boundaries, being challenged on how you behave, someone taking your toy in the sandbox. 

***P: What are the biggest misconceptions around play?***

IOT: It’s not all about easy fun. People forget what a playground actually involves: friction, drama, understanding your boundaries, being challenged on your behaviour, someone taking your toy in the sandbox. Fun, or a compelling way to engage people, is definitely part of it. But when you equate play purely with fun, you lose all those other layers. I suspect that's also why we so easily tie play to childhood and build structures to keep it in designated spots for a specific age group. 

Play also doesn’t always mean gamification. This is something that feels especially relevant to our practice. Gamification borrows the aesthetics of the game, the points, the levels, the scoreboard, and leaves out the part that matters. C. Thi Nguyen puts it well in his book *The Score*: in a game, you choose the goal, and you can always step back and ask if it was worth it. Gamification sets the goal for you and the score becomes the focus. Play, on the other hand, reinstates agency; it doesn’t always comply with the rules of the game. 

> Play gives people permission to act differently, and where they go with that permission is usually where the insight is hiding.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/71/fc716215-5729-441a-bd07-e2b50bc413b1/content/images/2026/10/Speculative-Design-Card-Decks.jpg)

Lore–Play by Imagination of Things

***P: What are some of the ways you incorporate play into your client projects?***

IOT: Sometimes play is already in the brief. More often, we smuggle it in. For a major heritage museum we snuck in playful rituals around ancient artefacts to make you think twice about provenance. For a global e-commerce company, we interrupted team meetings with new ways to encounter and understand their colleagues. For a Starbucks workers union, we turned memes about the brand into real life action to spread the word about unfair pay. The clients and the formats change, but our ethos stays the same: play gives people permission to act differently, and where they go with that permission is usually where the insight is hiding.

Where we want to go next is past the smuggling. Most briefs arrive as a list of KPIs to hit. We'd rather play with the brief itself and open it up until the real one appears: usually a bigger, less obvious question that people can gather around. That's the shift we're aiming for: brands that convene instead of broadcast.

> We realised that the tissue between the pieces we'd been collecting was our own definition of play.

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Unruly Play interactive archive 

***P: What is*** [***Unruly Play***](https://www.unrulyplay.com/?ref=protein.xyz) ***and what is your hope for it?***

IOT: We wanted to share our expanded view of play: what it can be, do and mean. Friends and colleagues kept asking for our references, and we realised that the tissue between the pieces we'd been collecting was our own definition of play. So we built an archive of references from the artists, designers and communities we admire: 200+ works of play in unlikely places, games about unusual things, and unexpected encounters. They range from Gutai experiments in 1950s Japan to community initiatives and subversive advertising stunts, and what links them is that they all use play as permission. Permission to step out of our everyday roles, to have unusual experiences, and to have genuinely new ideas. It started as a website. It turned into a series of events, and then into formats for working with brands and organisations. Our hope is to keep making room for new versions of it to emerge.

We are also developing Unruly Playgrounds, a creative coalition for brands formed around a challenge. We help them frame the challenge and design the playground: a place where talent and stakeholders meet on an even playing field. It transforms the project into a thrilling side quest rather than stiff target. 

***P: You recently hosted an Unruly Play event at*** [***The Art House*** ](https://thearthouse.live/?ref=protein.xyz)***in London. What was the idea behind the session, and did anything unusual or unexpected emerge from it?***

IOT: The idea was to take the archive off the screen and put it among strangers. We called it a choreographed evening, using play to meet people you'd never otherwise get seated next to. Around fifty people came, many of whose worlds don’t always overlap. With the archive as the backdrop, the evening was full of playful exercises inspired by some of the works in it. We turned the audience into a human piano, inspired by Fluxus artists like Ben Patterson, and gave everyone a deck of prompts for approaching strangers, a nod to Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's *Oblique Strategies.*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/71/fc716215-5729-441a-bd07-e2b50bc413b1/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-05-at-12.07.54.png)

Unruly Play event, September 2026 | Source: Ana Blumenkron

We closed with small groups working on briefs shaped with Feeld, Idea Store and Vital Arts. The brief from Feeld gave everyone the opportunity to play around with what dating means before it’s labelled: casual, situationship, exclusive etc. It underlined how many shared frustrations there are with dating today, and these frustrations turned out to be incredibly fertile ground for ideas and creativity. Once you make frustrations ‘playable’, even the people who had been quiet all evening started lighting up the corners.

> So the question on our website is an open door: we're all freaking out, and it helps to do it together.

***P: Your website opens with the question, ‘Are you freaking out?’. What's freaking you out at the moment?*** 

IOT: The impact of AI on learning, social interaction, and what we value as humans. The rise of far-right rhetoric. The affordability crisis. But the question mostly came from a general feeling in the creative industry that a big shift is happening, whether through this second industrial revolution or general global instability. This moment can also be an opportunity to organise, to form new creative coalitions, to change the way we do things as creative professionals. So the question on our website is an open door: we're all freaking out, and it helps to do it together.

***P: How are you seeing play play out in culture today? Are there any brands you think are* doing a good job at embracing play?**

IOT: Well, Protein recently opened a [LECTURE](https://www.protein.xyz/why-are-there-no-new-aesthetics/) series asking why there are no new aesthetics, and other studios are circling the same beige problem: a lot of brands and organisations are perhaps afraid to take risks. Play is a nice solution for that because it signals that ‘this is a test’, we are ‘just trying something out’, and it relieves people of the hubris of certainty and permanence. 

> We'd love to see more brands act as facilitators of play rather than trying to control the game. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/71/fc716215-5729-441a-bd07-e2b50bc413b1/content/images/2026/10/Neil-Leifer-Boxing-Photography-1.jpg)

Sports photographer Neil Leifer would smear Vaseline on his lens to emulate boxers' vision | Source: Neil Leifer 

We came across something Vaseline has been doing lately. People online had been using its product in all sorts of odd ways: on carved pumpkins, camera lenses, stuck rings. Instead of policing it, the brand joined the game. It tested the hacks in its labs, verified the ones that worked, and later turned some into actual products, with the people who invented them on the label. The brand was wise enough to follow the players. 

And a recipe we’re always happy to see is [Uniqlo Tate Play](https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/corporate-support/partnership/uniqlo-uniqlo-tate-play?ref=protein.xyz). A brand funds, a museum hosts, artists are commissioned to create something people can play with, and visitors do the rest. The brand creates the playground and then stays out of the picture. This summer it was Lina Lapelytė who filled the Turbine Hall with a maze of airport queue barriers and invited people to stomp, hum and sway their way through it until the whole hall became one piece of choreography. We'd love to see more brands act as facilitators of play rather than trying to control the game. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/71/fc716215-5729-441a-bd07-e2b50bc413b1/content/images/2026/10/Tate-Modern-Big-Maze.webp)

Lina Lapelytė, **Serendipity Island*, 2026 | Source: Tate / Reece Straw

| SEED       | #8450    |
| ---------- | -------- |
| DATE       | 06.10.26 |
| PLANTED BY | PROTEIN  |