Cohado is the most fundamental principle to create a world that works. Build solutions that capitalize on, and at the same time, solve the challenges that exist on the planet. Cohado is a flexible design structure, and a tool to understand collaborative and sustainable design. Initially Cohado was designed as a game. Says Gregory about Cohado,
“Cohado came to me while throwing down Dominos with a friend. We were demonstrating the capacity of testosterone to shift loving, thinking brothers into neanderthalic combatants. It was the game that was doing it to us as it has done across the planet. I said, ‘Time for a new game!’ That was the genesis of Cohado. It has since taken over every aspect of my life. You will see the imprint of the symbols and underlying purpose of Cohado throughout my work.”
Inventor Paulo Gregory realized that the 7 underlying principles represented by the 7 symbols, were a powerful tool for strategic design of virtually anything. The 7 layers, beginning with zero, represent vision, viewpoint, relationship, creativity, structure, manifestation, and community, can be utilized to move any process from concept to integration into the community or culture it supports. Then, integrating the design process with the two core “rules” of the game, innovating and maximizing assets for the community (as represented by the circle of “co-ponents” or players, and minimizing waste (as represented by unused pieces), players work collaboratively to develop an elegant solution to the challenge of the game, to utilize all pieces in an interlocking pattern that lifts the score as high as possible.
The game has been utilized to design community organizing strategies in East Baltimore, to evaluate college programs, and as the understructure to design curriculum for training programs such as the BenchMarks Artisan Training Project and Youth Unlocked.