PlayLab Workshop 03: If You Were a Square, Triangle or Circle with Eugenie Dodd & Karen Burbano

This workshop invited us to imagine ourselves as one of the three Bauhaus shapes a square, triangle, or circle and explore how a simple form could express personality. Guided by Bauhaus thinking, we were encouraged to strip away ornament and focus on function, essence, and transformation.

I was assigned the triangle, a shape often associated with direction, energy, and ambition. It also connects deeply with Kandinsky’s idea of upward striving and Gropius’s emphasis on clarity and purpose.

I began by reflecting on my own personality and how it could be translated through the triangle:

1. Competitive (Black) – This colour symbolises focus and determination, inspired by my badminton experience. The black surfaces of my folded triangles represent strength and confidence.
2. Energetic (White) – White adds lightness and openness, expressing positivity and balance in everyday life.
3. Ambitious (Yellow) – Yellow, as Kandinsky connected with triangles, reflects challenge, optimism, and upward motion. It represents my motivation to keep growing and evolving.

Using these traits, I created a series of folded origami triangles. Each fold became a small act of discovery learning how the paper behaves, how edges meet, and how light and shadow create structure. Following Albers’s pragmatic view, I treated the paper respectfully, allowing its natural qualities to guide the design. Inspired by Itten, the making process became a meditative way of seeking inner clarity.

In the end, the clustered triangles formed a self-portrait without a face a combination of energy, balance, and ambition. Guided by Moholy-Nagy, I embraced experimentation and the dialogue between hand and material. The outcome was simple but expressive: a personal translation of Bauhaus principles through form, colour, and emotion.

This workshop felt abstract at first, but through making, the idea became clearer: “Making is thinking.” The process of folding and composing triangles helped me understand that identity can be visualised through geometry not as decoration, but as distilled essence.