I have a task to create a lighting component to be used in communities. 

This component must take the topic that was selected and create a list of the subtopics on the page (Name, description, url).  So when the user clicks the subtopic list it will bring them to the articles related to that list. 

I need to create a clickable results list of the subtopic that will dynamically change based on the topic selected.  

I am able to get the list of topics and get all the information.  However, in order to pass it back to the component, the only thing I can think of is creating a custom object based on what was selected.  I will create a custom class that has all the information of the topic and will place that in a list that will go back to the component to build out the page results.  I am fairly sure this will work. 

My concerns:
1) Am I making too many roundtrips to server since it has to go back each time to get the new list
2) Should I really create a new object.  There are classes for topics, however, I am not sure how I can build a grid around this information. https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_connectapi_output_managed_topic.htm

Any ideas?