Most construction toys train kids to think in right angles. Qubits — a modular building system dreamed up by Poway architect Mark Burginger — wants them to think like nature instead.
The Origin Story
Burginger has been mulling this idea since the 1970s, inspired by Buckminster Fuller and his geodesic domes. Decades later, after a career designing custom homes and commercial buildings, he finally built it: a toy made of interlocking geometric units that don’t rely on rectangles. His pitch? “Nature doesn’t put itself together with rectangles.” Fair point, though nature also doesn’t usually snap together at all.
What It Actually Is
Each Qubits piece consists of three pairs of symmetrical prisms stacked in overlapping tiers. They connect to each other in multiple configurations, letting kids build structures that look more like molecular models than skyscrapers. It’s billed as the “construction toy of the future,” which is either visionary or the kind of thing you say when you’ve been staring at prototypes for too long.
The Idea Behind It
Burginger hopes kids will “develop a different way of thinking about how things go together” — moving past the Lego block mentality into something more organic. Whether children will embrace crystalline geometry over the satisfying click of a brick remains to be seen. The patent has been published, so at least the idea is officially on the record.
It’s architecture school in a toy box, assuming your kid is into that sort of thing.
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