Please join Cas Holman (inventor and play designer), Tucker Viemeister, (Viemeister Industries), Alicia Tam Wei (Assistant Professor of Product + Industrial Design), and Lucia Cuba (Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Social Justice) for a conversation about Cas’s new book, Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity released in October 2025. 

This event is open to TNS students, faculty and staff.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

We’re all born playful. But when we grow up, we learn to suppress this critical, hardwired instinct and our lives become ruled by “getting things done.” As designer Cas Holman explains, this disconnection from our playful selves is hazardous to everything from our emotional wellbeing to our ability to problem solve and innovate. The emerging science of play shows that it sparks joy, wonder, creativity and insight at any age. 

In Playful, Cas explains the power of “free play” through open-ended, unstructured activities that we become absorbed in with no obvious goal or purpose. The ways we can play are endless and what recharges us most is unique to each of us: whether it’s a piece of art we create, an entertaining conversation with a stranger, or an experiment to shake up a routine task. Playful draws on psychology, history, art and design thinking to make a powerful case for the vital importance of play for grown-ups in a world obsessed with productivity. Cas’s goal is to help us (re) learn how to play.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cas Holman is the founder and chief designer of the toy company Heroes Will Rise and a former professor of Industrial Design at RISD. Cas travels the globe speaking about playful learning, the design process and the value of play in all aspects of life. She has shared her perspective in workshops and seminars with teams at Google, Nike, LEGO Foundation, Disney Imagineering and art museums around the world. Some of her designs include toys like Rigamajig and Geemo, as well as play experiences at the High Line and the Liberty Science Center.  Cas is the author of Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity with science journalist Lydia Denworth (Avery, Penguin Random House, 2025). Cas lives in Brooklyn and designs from her studio in the Catskills, New York.  

ABOUT THE MODERATORS:
TUCKER VIEMEISTER is an award-winning industrial designer whose influential work includes the universally beloved OXO Good Grips line and the multidisciplinary Lab at the Rockwell Group. A Fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America, Viemeister’s work resides in the collections of MoMA and the Smithsonian. He currently teaches at the Parsons School of Design and serves as Chair of The Rowena Group at Pratt Institute, as well as Vice President of the Architectural League of New York.

ALICIA TAM WEI is an Assistant Professor of Product + Industrial Design at Parsons School of Design, where her work explores how design can address sustainability, emerging technologies and the future of play. She founded the Open Play Lab at Parsons, a research initiative that investigates the connections between play, creativity, and innovation.

LUCIA CUBA is a designer, artist, and educator whose work explores fashion as a space for dialogue, care, and collective imagination. As Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Social Justice, she integrates textile art, critical design, and play to question how garments shape our ways of learning, relating, and acting in the world. Her ongoing projects, Acts of Wearing and Fashion Playspace, investigate how fashion can nurture agency, empathy, and care through participatory and educational practices. Lucia’s broader body of work—including Artículo 6 and BASELAT—addresses themes of human rights, health, and Latin American fashion systems, positioning design as a platform for reflection and social transformation.