The Power of Play

Dominic Lehoux | Design Director

“Play is the highest form of research.”
Albert Einstein

To find stardust as a creator, you must explore. Creativity emerges through movement and engagement with the world. Just as observation teaches you to zoom in and out with your senses, play teaches you to move through the world with curiosity, freedom, and experimentation. A fearless method of learning through mistakes.

Every creative person I know, knowingly or not, is an explorer of worlds. And play is often the doorway to those worlds.

Play begins with questions.

A two-year-old stacking block is already testing physics, predicting outcomes, discovering limits. A child with a shape-sorting cube explores hypotheses, learns systems, and experiences the joy of understanding. These are experiments, gently disguised as fun.

This is the heart of scientific method:
Why is that?
What if?
What happens when…?
How does this work?

When you’re stuck, it’s rarely useful to beg for answers.
It is always useful to ask a better question.

A shift as small as “Do we have the right process?” can open an entirely new path of action. Curiosity creates motion. Motion generates discovery. Discovery opens a new path. It’s not only what you know that unlocks creative solutions,  it’s how you think and how willing you are to make mistakes along the way.

Play is often defined as “activity done for enjoyment rather than practical purpose,” but that definition is misleading. Play is not the opposite of seriousness. Play is seriousness without fear. It is exploration without shame, research without rigidity, innovation without self-judgment. It is the human mind moving without friction.

Play is making the wrong choice and expecting a fantastical result.

For eight years, I had the privilege of working inside  the largest toy company in the world. I didn’t design the toys themselves, but I built the worlds they lived in: trade show environments, showroom landscapes, installations, store windows, events, entire universes where toys could shine and stories could unfold. For a time, I was both architect and builder,  the dreamer and the doer,  and it felt natural, almost inevitable.

At Mattel, entire teams studied play patterns and child development. Piaget saw play as cognitive scaffolding ;  the way children build their mental architecture. Erik Erikson described play as a place to rehearse life itself, to model reality and master it safely. By those standards, toys are noble tools.

And yet… children will play with anything. A wooden spoon, a shoebox, a stray paperclip, the wrapping of the gift more than the gift itself. We’ve all seen it.

And that is the point.

Play is not inside the toy.
Play is inside the human.

Every expert I read framed play as something essential for children ,  but curiously, few, if none, extended that truth into adulthood. As if at some invisible age, play simply stops working. As if maturity replaces curiosity. As if knowing more means questioning less. Playing less…

But if the child uses play to model reality, why shouldn’t the adult? Why shouldn’t we work through our problems through experimentation, imagination, trial and error,  the same way we once did when the stakes were lower?

Play is not childish.
Play is human.

And the moment you let yourself play again,  really play,  the obstacles in your life become more flexible. Rigid problems begin to bend. Possibilities open. Your mind loosens. Ideas breathe.

Play is curiosity in motion.
Curiosity is the engine of discovery.
And discovery is the foundation of creativity.

Toys or no toys, play surrounds you.  It lives in exploration, in trying things, in building a prototype, in sketching a silly idea, in testing a hunch, in asking “what if?” with no pressure to deliver brilliance on the first try. It is a way of navigating the world,  lightly, bravely, honestly.

At 2Heads, play is a method we protect. A space we design intentionally so ideas can collide, evolve, and reveal themselves. Beyond that,  It continues into the experiences we create, where connection emerges through action: through participation, curiosity, and moments that invite people to engage with their hands and imagination.

Play creates connection because it speaks to something universal. When people play, they lower their guard. They engage with curiosity rather than expectation. And in that rare space, something essential happens: the experience reaches the human heart and leaves a lasting impression.

Play with madness, make the wrong choice and navigate the edge of chaos.

Play is not the opposite of work.
Play is the method by which the mind learns to create.