If you press on the workbench, you will see all the cultures for which there are cubes to collect. Under each culture, you can see how many you have already collected. If you press the icon of the culture, you can see which items you have already unlocked. Each item costs a certain amount of materials to build. This 'building price' is indicated at the bottom right.

If the materials are coloured, it means you have enough materials to build. If the materials are shown in grey, it means you haven't collected enough materials yet. When you have created an item, it is automatically put in your character's backpack.
New objects can be unlocked by filling the reading power meter.

 Press the workbench to build objects.

Overview of all possible building objects.

If the images are coloured, it means there are enough materials available.

If the images are greyed out, you don't have enough materials available yet.