The studio of Juan Bordes in the core of
Madrid, and later his workshop nearby,
are where this encounter with the architect
Giancarlo Mazzanti takes place. A collec-
tion of treatises and toys, and the sculptor’s
own works, serve as backdrop for a con-
versation that revolves around their shared
interest in play.
Giancarlo Mazzanti: One of the things I
find most exciting about the material nature
of a plaything is that it changes every time
a child picks it up. Toys have an intrinsic
connection to themes related to chance or
disorder, which are important.
Juan Bordes: That is precisely among
the topics I would like us to discuss. The
chaos that generates the act of playing. The
moment at which the child puts away her
or his toys is when these new compositions
arise, which may not be the ‘correct’ forma-
tion, or the right symmetry. But it is a new
configuration at any rate, with the potential
to trigger many other things.
GM: That’s why I play a lot in my studio.
This penchant for play could have some-
thing to do with my Caribbean origins –
Canarian in your case. Because playing is
fundamental in our cultures. But in spite of
our shared interest in toys and games, our
approaches are very different.
JB: Exactly! I see it as a genesis, as a
source, as an origin.
GM: I am as interested in play as in
toys. The act of playing and the material
construction of the toy. Two key aspects
of the same thing. All of this, at heart, is
simply a return to childhood. Playing once
again with wooden pieces, in the knowl-
edge that architecture and a child’s set of
building blocks are one and the same. Toys
embody specific cultural and historical mo-
ments, and so does architecture. In essence,
a culture could be explained by means of a
toy, but it could also be explained through
architecture. I find it thrilling that we’re not
thinking of playthings as a subject of study,
but because of something in the cultures
that we happen to come from, connected to
the sea, with music, and with many other
things, all of which lead to a love for the
ludic. In my case it has to do with the
colorful tropics. I come from a city that
is all color, music… And even though the
Canary Islands are not exactly the same, I
believe those things have a certain impor-
tance there too.
JB: Take my case, for example. Mine
was a childhood without toys. It’s not that
I crafted my own toys, but I did take to
sculpture at a very young age, 8 or 12, and
already with certain discipline and methods
of casting and molding… If I never actually
enrolled in fine arts school, it was because
it would have been redundant, and I wanted
to avoid those academic techniques. For me,
puppets were foundational. Life emerges
from a hand, and later from the outside.
That’s where my interest in surgery later
came from. In fact, as a teen, I wanted to
study medicine, and I had the opportunity
to visit a charity hospital. Surprisingly, they
even let me into the operating room.
GM: Indeed, between the hand and the toy
is a very beautiful bond, an interaction. An
“I am as interested in
play as in toys. The act of
playing and the material
construction of the toy”
