Incremental Change: AtFAB Status Report

INCREMENTAL CHANGE AtFAB STATUS REPORT

ANNE FILSON GARY ROHRBACHER April 18 - May 7, 2013

The Keller Gallery MIT Department of Architecture

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Previous: Cellular Screen, detail photograph 2

Above: Opening Day, Incremental Change exhibition at the Keller Gallery 3

Above: Visualization images of layout for Incremental Change exhibition at the Keller Gallery Opposite & Following spread: Elevation of layout for Incremental Change exhibition at the Keller Gallery 4

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Cat in Bag ii & iii Table

Cellular Screen DOWNLOADS

DOWNLOADS The Cat in Bag ii and iii Tables are free standing tables. They have 2 different kinds of S/Z joint connections, with 8 total connections in a Cat in Bag ii or 12 connections in the Cat in Bag iii. The Tables are comprised of 2-5 different kinds of pieces and 5 pieces total. The table’s rotationally symmetrical pieces lock together with a pressure fit, requiring no hardware or adhesives.

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08 TRANSFORMATION DESIGN The Cat in Bag ii and iii Table shapes can be transformed from 500 to 1800mm in width and depth to situate them in a variety of shaped contexts. The Table heights can be adjusted from 300mm to 1000mm, and they can be shaped to aggregate or flock with multiple Cat in Bag Tables to form larger configurations that fill a space.

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X 500 - 1800

The Cellular Screen is a modular partition that bounces light through opaque surfaces. It has 2 different kinds of S/Z joint connections based on the S/Z joint, with the number of connections determined by its size. The Screen is comprised of 3 different kinds of pieces, with the total quantity of pieces dependent upon each versions specified dimensions. Its parts lock into a frame with lateral stability and long span.

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Z 300 - 1000

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02

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Y 500 - 1800

n

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TRANSFORMATION DESIGN The Cellular Screen transforms both dimensionally and modularly. It has multiple panels that transform from 750 to 2000mm in height and length, and can be subdivided into cells, which are themselves transformable to optimize transparency. The cell grid is defined by a constant, alternating, or non-linear variable.

X x/n

Y y/n

Z 750 - 2400

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Exhibition Design Lead Anne Filson, Gary Rohrbacher Exhibition Team Sydney Kidd, Seth Gover, Margaret Clines and Bill Young/ShopBot Tools Special Thanks Nader Tehrani Filson and Rohrbacher Sarah M. Hirschman MIT Architecture Judith Daniels Anna Vargas James Harrington

The Keller Gallery Room 7-408 MIT Architecture 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, Ma 02139-2307 Series Editor Irene Hwang Assistant Editors Elizabeth Yarina Nathan Friedman Mariel VillerÊ Publisher SA+P Press Design TwoPoints.Net Printer Agpograf Contact SA+P Press Room 7-337, MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, Ma 02139-2307 ISBN 978-0-9836654-3-4 Š2013 SA+P Press, All Rights Reserved

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Contents

Incremental Change Anne Filson and Gary Rohrbacher . . . . . . . . . . 11 Towards A Generous Architcture Matthijs Bouw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Politics of Production Michael Kubo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Firm Statement and Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Incremental Change was presented in the Keller Gallery from April 18 - May 7, 2013.

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Below: DIY Adaptation of Open Cabinet by AurĂŠlien Farina/Paper Tiger, Paris, France

INCREMENTAL CHANGE ANNE FILSON AND GARY ROHRBACHER

The objects installed and represented here come from the AtFAB series of customizable, CNC fabricated furniture. We launched the project in an effort to test our architectural preoccupations under real conditions in the most immediate way possible. We saw designing a line of furniture as an analog to architecture, liberated from the usual intermediaries that we face in our architectural projects. At the same time, we saw self-initiated, applied design research as a way to open our work up to a larger set of questions than is typically found in theoretical architectural projects.

Our investigation started with several questions. Could we provoke a decentralized global manufacturing network by posting furniture cut files online? Could designers use digital tools to productively engage the Maker Movement and leverage the best attributes of design expertise and DIY? In the process, could we demonstrate new forms of entrepreneurship for architects?

AtFAB begins in the middle, with one construction joint that underpins a complex, adaptive system of furniture objects.

We developed a basic S/Z joint that can be cut from any thickness of sheet material by any CNC cutting machine to provide a strong 3-sided connection between two flat shapes. We see the S/Z as a body that slips between increasingly accessible CNC tools, a ubiquitous sheet material supply chain, distributed fabrication networks, and an increasing desire for locavore, customizable goods. We hope to see this detail as the few beats that becomes a symphony of de-centralized manufacturing, consumers with agency, and designers with a newfound relevance.

In an effort to derive much from little, we developed a system to productively aggregate S/Z joints into tab, corner, foot, and hanger assemblies that could be further combined into larger structural assemblies and then configured to accommodate everyday programs of sitting, working, screening, or storage. To date, we’ve designed dozens of clearly differentiated furniture objects that share this system of assemblies, structures and programs as well as a capacity for easy, intuitive construction. In the process of designing these furniture objects, we also choreographed sets of outward-facing parameters that would enable anyone to make incremental but appreciable changes to a piece of furniture.

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We designed parametric transformations that would maximize choice, difference and functional variation, while preserving joint assemblies, structural integrity, manufacturing feasibility, and systemic consistency. Our resulting definitions change the dimensions of most furniture objects, determine the cell size and quantity of modular objects, and adjust the shape of the Cat in Bag objects. At the extremes, we found that some combinations of transformation elicited altogether unanticipated functional typologies: changes in magnitude yielding changes in kind. To complement this adaptable system with flexibility in fabrication, we also designed definitions for adjusting kerf size, material thickness, and fastener diameter. These general parameters collectively enable fabrication with the widest array of CNC machines and materials, thus facilitating a distributed manufacturing platform, where one can fabricate AtFAB anyplace, anytime, with any machine and any material that’s locally available.

Our greatest challenge in AtFAB’s development was to identify the exact point of letting go of the design and ceding agency to unknown collaborators at a distance. This point culminates in a system that we see as open, evolving, adaptable, and in a state of becoming. In contrast to what we typically find with a terminal design that’s handed down, offering design up as an emergent, living thing has presented us with the opportunity to watch it unfold. A worldwide community of AtFAB enthusiasts and makers has emerged over the past year, who have shared their stories of making customizations, interpretations and adaptations in distant FabLabs, garages, schools, shops, and hacker spaces. Beyond the object, and even beyond the system, we’ve also generated a community that is growing and evolving.

We believe AtFAB represents a first step in the much needed incremental change toward new models for reduced energy delivery, new models for increased relevance through community interaction, and new models for the practice of architecture. This exhibit is a status report on our progress.

The projection at the right shows our interactive applications that transform each AtFAB furniture object, which were employed to generate the site specific versions of our Rotational Cabinet and Rotational Table and furniture arrays sitting in the center of the gallery. Around the gallery walls, you’ll find descriptions of the first furniture objects in the series, which identify physical attributes, the type and limits of transformation, and where each has been downloaded in the world as of April 2013. You’ll also find a QR code for the each page our website. We welcome you to join our community by downloading files and promoting the networked manufacturing paradigm.

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Above: DIY Adaptation of Open Cabinet by Aurélien Farina/Paper Tiger, Paris, France Following spread: Open Source fabrication, Five to Thirty Minute Chair by Pedro Terra Lab, São Paolo, Brazil

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Above: Greg Flanagan/Tree on a Hill Workshop, open source fabrication, Tweet Opposite page (Above & Center): Greg Flanagan/Tree on a Hill Workshop, open source fabrication Opposite page (Below): Furniture in-situ at Makerbot’s Headquarters in Brooklyn, NY

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Below: Incremental Change gallery graphics

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Below: Incremental Change gallery graphics Following spread: Incremental Change installed at Keller Gallery

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TOWARDS A GENEROUS ARCHITECTURE MATTHIJS BOUW

Matthijs Bouw is a Dutch architect, and the founding principal of One Architecture. He collaborates with Filson and Rohrbacher, and with the artist Pierre Bismuth, on A Mies for All, which aims to develop a business that will make possible the serial reproduction of iconic architecture—starting with the Farnsworth House.

Digital technology has greatly changed architecture. It will greatly change the architect. Filson and Rohrbacher, in their work, and in AtFAB in particular, push these changes in a most generous way. And that word, generous, is to me a key attribute to what architecture, and the architect, should become.

In the 20th century, the architect was in control and in a position of power. With space and territory as the central organizational mechanism of our world, architecture became the century’s central art form, and the architect its protagonist. It was in architecture that the architect shaped our society.

Digital technology has distributed knowledge, power and production. The one has become the multiple. This development has fundamentally changed how architects can work. Change is difficult. Many architects confine themselves to the margins of the profession, sticking to what they always knew, by working for the one-percent or in autocratic environments. Filson and Rohrbacher, in AtFAB, have decided to embrace the change and to start to work through its possibilities. By starting at a smaller, manageable scale, through a series of CNC-fabricated, digitally distributed furniture pieces, they are re-positioning the architect in the multiple.

Because digital technology made knowledge sharing and collaboration easier, end users can, and demand to, play a bigger role in design.

With AtFAB, Filson and Rohrbacher explore this issue by ‘letting go of the design and ceding agency to unknown collaborators at a distance’.

AtFAB’s furniture is based on a smart construction joint. As the video in the exhibition of the web interface shows beautifully, the resulting possibilities of different thicknesses of any sheet material allow users to customize dimensions, assemblages, forms and materials. The architect becomes not the designer of final products, but

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the facilitator, through a precise design intervention, of collaborative processes.

Digital technology does not only result in more invested endusers of AtFAB furniture. The distributed production method, with CNC-routers operated by local businesses across the globe, working with local materials and their local suppliers, promises to create a network of people invested in the product. This network, it can be expected, will start adapting and developing the furniture further. Ceding control results in a system for bringing AtFAB to market that is more resilient and scales better than having a single producer and distributor.

Most importantly, AtFAB furniture, because of its simple freedom, is very beautiful. Seeing a family of furniture, each piece slightly different, in size, function and material, all the product of an open relationship with its users and makers, is an awesome sight.

Time and again, AtFAB shows that giving and opening up brings new riches. By using digital technology to engage differently with the world in which architects work, new opportunities come forward.

What these opportunities will be, time will tell. Perhaps the logic of AtFAB, with a stronger connect between design and production, and between producers and consumers, will be extended towards the self- or co-development of small architecture projects.

At this time, however, the business model is still emerging.

The files are distributed for free under a creative commons license for non-commercial use. In these initial phases, they keep their business running by customizing their own open designs for clients such as MakerBot, and by collaborating with the global distributed manufacturing network OpenDesk to sell locally fabricated AtFAB. These days the limits of the profession of architecture are blurring. Architects, it seems, design more than buildings.

They design joints that generate buildings. They design ideas, processes, or maybe even communities. They, as Filson and Rohrbacher show us, can become consultants, coaches, 25

Above: Visualization of Open Storage Unit variations Opposite: Reception Desk and Conference Tables at MakerBot Industries Headquarters, Brooklyn, NY

activists, and builders. As a consequence, architects do not wait for clients anymore. They initiate, share and invest. AtFAB helps show us where the architect’s knowledge is presently of greatest necessity and value.

The questions Filson and Rohrbacher ask through AtFAB (“[Can] we provoke a decentralized global manufacturing network by posting furniture cut files online? [Can] designers use digital tools to productively engage the Maker Movement and leverage the best attributes of design expertise and DIY? [Can] we demonstrate new forms of entrepreneurship for architects?”) are not only generous towards the users and producers of the furniture, by inviting them to engage the product, but also to the profession. In AtFab, more than files are shared: by paving the way for new business models for architects, they share a new trajectory for our future.

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This spread: Furniture joint detail images at MakerBot Industries Headquarters, Brooklyn, NY

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THE POLITICS OF PRODUCTION MICHAEL KUBO

It is safe to say that few practicing architects have a better understanding of the economics of the profession than Anne Filson and Gary Rohrbacher. By this I mean not merely the day to day business of running an office but the broader economy of the design professions as a whole and the shifting status, and valuation, of design over the last half-century. For Filson and Rohrbacher this is borne of hard-nosed research into the structure of design practice and its subjection to changing conditions of legislation, speculation, and risk, verified by a long professional path that has taken them through such varied practices as OMA in Rotterdam, SHoP and SOM in New York, and IDEO in San Francisco.

The results of this research are expressed succinctly in a graphic timeline developed by Filson and often shown in their lectures to design students. Simply titled “What Happened,” it charts the average pre-tax net profit of U.S. architecture firms over the past sixty years. The conclusion of this timeline is predictably bleak. Architects’ compensation has dropped precipitously from its peak in the late 1950s, through a series of structural shifts in the scope and valuation of design services. These include the rise in litigation and the corresponding insurance architecture firms are required to carry; the revision of AIA contract documents to remove supervision from the scope of architectural services during construction administration (1960); the elimination of fee guidelines and the AIA’s agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to allow architects to compete on the basis of fees (1972, definitively resolved in 1990); a rise in compensation after the rise of real-estate speculation in the 1980s and the economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s, and their corresponding fall after the recession in 2008.

Michael Kubo is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture at MIT, where his work focuses on The Architects Collaborative and the emergence of collective and corporate architectural practices after World War II. With Jon Lott and William O’Brien Jr., he is a founding partner of Collective–LOK. With Chris Grimley and Mark Pasnik, he is codirector of pinkcomma gallery in Boston. Kubo, Grimley, and Pasnik are co-authors of HEROIC, an ongoing project on concrete modernism in Boston and other U.S. cities from 1960 to 1976.

Opposite: Bill Young of ShopBot Tools assembling AtFAB furniture pieces, Exmore, VA

In the context of all these changes, AtFAB is an initiative to change the value proposition of design by recasting the economic relationship 31

Above and Opposite: Five to Thirty Minute Chair

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between designers, producers, and consumers. In that sense it is a deeply political project, concerned with reviving the agency of designers as well as of the people they serve. Avoiding any longing for the elevated status of an architecture that can ultimately only serve (and be afforded by) an elite, AtFAB finds its cultural power through an entrepreneurship that can bring better design to a mass audience and, by extension, revaluate the designer as a crucial (though no longer solitary) actor in that process.

As a model of authorship this is both more and less than the typical conception of the designer: less in that it distributes agency over the final product to a collaborative network of fabricators and consumers, yet far more in the reach these products can achieve and the range of their possible outcomes.

Crucially, this approach hinges on knowing where to invest control in the production process and where to give it up. Filson and

Rohrbacher describe the greatest challenge of the AtFAB project as needing “to identify the exact point of letting go of the design and ceding agency to unknown collaborators at a distance.” This calibration is resolved through a single, ingenious construction joint that at once accommodates the very different orders of flexibility required by the designer, the fabricator, and the user. This joint is not an object separate from the materials it brings together (as in Konrad Wachsmann and Walter Gropius’s Packaged House system, based on a universal metal connector which had to be custom-made in the factory) but rather a logic of assembly that is native to the production process, “a body that slips between increasingly accessible CNC tools, a ubiquitous sheet material supply chain, distributed fabrication networks, and an increasing desire for locavore, customizable goods.” It is a moment of connection where design intentions, material properties, and consumer choices meet.

The specificity of the AtFAB joint and its articulation relies on an equally deliberate design of the production chain from design to assembly and of the tools through which designers, makers, and users communicate in that process. Taking

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advantage of existing fabricator networks and platforms like OpenDesk, AtFAB privileges the local and distributed over the centralized, dramatically increasing the options for customization along the way. The social and financial benefits of this approach are manifold. Culturally, the emphasis on a participatory network of makers has created a growing community in which both producers and consumers are empowered in making objects that can be endlessly adapted to serve varying desires. Economically, it means cutting out corporate intermediaries in the manufacturing and distribution process, which both reduces costs for the end users and increases the fees recouped by the designer. Just as it restores the ratio between work and compensation for producers, it gives consumers control over the balance between labor and cost in the final product, allowing them to weigh their desired involvement in manufacturing and assembly against the corresponding price of the object. Adapting easily to different production contexts, the next iteration of AtFAB may also include licensing arrangements that will bring manufacturing and distribution to international markets that current fabricator networks won’t serve. The seamless communication enabled by digital cut files allows the quality of the final product to be maintained across all of these options.

The next stage in Filson and Rohrbacher’s research is the translation of this value proposition back onto the domain of building practice. In A Mies For All, a collaborative project with One Architecture and Pierre Bismuth that applies the AtFAB model to the design of the house, together they identify the potential to create an “open-source Farnsworth,” using similar networks of customizable fabrication and delivery to make high-quality design economically feasible for anyone who desires it. Like AtFAB, their ambition is no less than to restore the direct connection between architect and client without corporate intermediaries, reclaim control of the production and assembly process, and recalibrate a fair relationship between design and compensation. Here they take up the full implications of their research into the economic conditions of practice over the past half-century as well the transformative potential of design-driven, opensource platforms. So too they reframe the modernist maxim of translatability from any design problem to its next larger or smaller scale. Describing their initial approach to the AtFAB project, Filson and Rohrbacher write that “We saw designing a line of furniture as an analog to architecture, liberated from the usual intermediaries that we face in our architectural projects.” Exploiting the insights gained through this analogical process, their work now suggests the potential to liberate the practice of architecture in turn.

Below: One to Several Table, parametric interface built with Processing.js Following spread: Incremental Change Installed at the Keller Gallery, photo by Judith Daniels, SA+P.

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BIOGRAPHIES

Anne Filson (AIA) is an architect and educator, who has pursued the critical practice of architecture through a wide range of projects for many types of clients. Prior to founding the architecture, design and research practice Filson and Rohrbacher, in 2008, she was a Project Architect at OMA/ Rem Koolhaas, pursued Strategy and Design Consulting in IDEO’s Smart Space Practice, and worked at both large corporate and small design-centric firms. She teaches design and professional practice at the University of Kentucky, and holds a MArch degree from Columbia University and a BA in Art History from Smith College.

Gary Rohrbacher (AIA) is an architect and educator, and co-founder of the architecture, design and research practice Filson and Rohrbacher in 2008. As a project architect and senior designer, he has focused on the integration of design, theory and technology on award winning projects at Machado and Silvetti and SOM, among others. He’s recognized for his teaching excellence at Harvard University’s Design School, California College of the Arts, University of Texas at Austin, and presently at the University of Kentucky. He holds a SMArchS from MIT, an MArch from Columbia University, and a BA from Lehigh University.

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FILSON AND ROHRBACHER WWW.FILSON-ROHRBACHER.COM

Opposite: Incremental Change, furniture graphics

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Anne Filson and Gary Rohrbacher lead Filson and Rohrbacher, an architecture, design and research firm. They bring past experience of building award winning projects for innovative architectural and design practices into their own project scenarios that require design the most, but usually receive it the least. Filson and Rohrbacher approach all projects by recasting the role of designer and by finding affordances with digital tools and techniques, in order to produce powerful design solutions for challenges that come in many sizes, contexts and industries.

AtFAB is their first self-initiated project and business that has been published internationally in peer reviewed, business and industry journals, and also featured in popular print and online publications.

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Above and Opposite: Incremental Change installed at the Keller Gallery Following Spreads: Catalog of furniture and cut-sheet layout

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One to Several Table DOWNLOADS The One to Several Table supports working and gathering. It has 3 different kinds of S/Z joint connections, with 22 total connections within one Table. The Table is comprised of 6 different kinds of pieces, with 13 pieces total.

The Table’s loads and forces are resolved with a torsion box top and a rotationally symmetrical arrangement of tapered leg assemblies that provide stability.

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22 TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

X 450 - 1800

Y 450 - 1800

Z 750.1000.1250

The table transforms dimensionally in width and length, to accommodate the gathering of one or several individuals. It’s minimum parameters yield a table that seats one, and its maximum dimension is limited by common materials and machine beds. Three height options provide a range of seated and standing uses. Optional grommets can be added for wires.

Silver Lining Bed DOWNLOADS The Silver Lining Bed is a platform bed. It has 3 different kinds of S/Z joint connections, and 9 different kinds of pieces, with the number of connectors and pieces determined by its size. Its torsion box platform and symmetrically arranged tapered leg assemblies enable stability and long spans. The bed can be situated against a wall or free-standing within a space.

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TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

X 750 - 2000

Y 750 - 1000

Z 300

The Bed grows modularly from a daybed to a single, double and king size bed. The Bed transforms both dimensionally and modularly. It transforms from 750 to 2000mm in width and depth can be subdivided into cells, which are themselves transformable to optimize structure and lightness. The Bed works well situated in the center of a space or against a wall.

Ninety Minute Chair DOWNLOADS The Ninety Minute Chair is a chair for lounging.

It has 4 different kinds of S/Z joint connections, with 18 total connections within one Chair. The Ninety Minute Chair is comprised of 7 different kinds of pieces, with 9 pieces total. Loads are distributed across its interlocking seat, arms and legs, so it easily carries several individuals across a long span.

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18 TRANSFORMATION DESIGN The Ninety Minute Chair transforms dimensionally from 800 to 2400mm in width, in order to accommodate seating for one, two, or three individuals. The Chair works well as a single object that seats one or several. It can be aggregated in pairs. Multiple chairs in multiple sizes work well as a seating group.

X 800 - 2400

Y 782

Z 873

Five To Thirty Minute Chair DOWNLOADS The Five to Thirty Minute Chair is a side chair. It has 2 different kinds of S/Z joint connections, with 13 total connections within one Chair. The Chair is comprised of 6 different kinds of pieces, with 10 pieces total. Its loads and forces are resolved with symmetrically arranged tapered leg assemblies.

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02

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X 430 - 1000

Y 565 - 1000

0 - 10 | 75 - 85

The Five to Thirty Minute Chair transforms dimensionally from 430 to 1000mm wide to accommodate seating for one or multiple individuals. The chair seat and back angles can be independently adjusted to accommodate postures that range from an upright seating for working to lower, relaxed seating for lounging.

The seat length can also be extended.

Walking Chest DOWNLOADS The Walking Chest is a chest of drawers. It has 3 different kinds of S/Z joint connections and is comprised of 11 different kinds of pieces, with total numper of connections and pieces total determined by its number of drawers. Its loads and forces are resolved in a rotationally symmetrical arrangement of tapered leg assemblies that support a frame with cavities that hold operable drawers.

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TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

X 800 - 2100

Y 400- 600

Z 400 - 2100

The Walking Chest transforms dimensionally from 800 to 2100mm in width, 400 to 600 in depth, and 400 to 2100mm in height. It accommodates different drawer configurations within its frame for a range of storage needs.

Cellular Screen DOWNLOADS The Cellular Screen is a modular partition that bounces light through opaque surfaces. It has 2 different kinds of S/Z joint connections based on the S/Z joint, with the number of connections determined by its size. The Screen is comprised of 3 different kinds of pieces, with the total quantity of pieces dependent upon each versions specified dimensions. Its parts lock into a frame with lateral stability and long span.

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TRANSFORMATION DESIGN The Cellular Screen transforms both dimensionally and modularly. It has multiple panels that transform from 750 to 2000mm in height and length, and can be subdivided into cells, which are themselves transformable to optimize transparency. The cell grid is defined by a constant, alternating, or non-linear variable.

X x/n

Y y/n

Z 750 - 2400

Cat in Bag i Table DOWNLOADS The Cat in Bag Table is a low coffee table. It has two different kinds of S/Z joint connections, with 5 total connections within one Table. The Table is comprised of 3 different pieces (or 2 pieces in the case of a bilaterally symmetrical shape), with a total of 3 pieces. All pieces lock together with a pressure fit, requiring no hardware or adhesives.

2-3

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03

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TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

X 500 - 1800

Y 500 - 1800

Z 300

The Cat in Bag Table shape can be transformed from 500 to 1800mm in width and depth to situate it in a variety of shaped contexts. The Table can be shaped to aggregate or flock with multiple Cat in Bag Tables to form larger configurations that fill a space.

Rotational Table DOWNLOADS The Rotational Table is a table with 4 storage compartments, each accessed from the table’s 4 sides. It has 3 different kinds of S/Z joint connections, with 17 total connections within a single Table. The Rotational Table is comprised of 5 different kinds of pieces, with pieces total.

Its rotationally symmetrical arrangement of tapered leg assemblies yields cantilevered corners.

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17 TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

X 450 - 2400

Y 450 - 2400

Z 400 - 2400

The Rotational Table transforms dimensionally from 450 to 2400mm in width and depth, and 400mm to 2400mm in height. The transformations enable the table to suit a variety of contexts as low table at the center of a seating group, as a compact side table or pedestal at the center or perimeter of a space, or as a tall storage piece or partition.

Rotational Cabinet DOWNLOADS The Rotational Cabinet has 6 storage compartments accessed from 4 sides. Each Cabinet has 3 different kinds of S/Z joint connections, with 22 total connections, and is comprised of 6 different kinds of pieces, with 13 total pieces. Its rotationally symmetrical arrangement of tapered leg assemblies and interlocking panels enable it to storage loads across a long span.

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22 TRANSFORMATION DESIGN The Rotational Cabinet depth transforms dimensionally from 400mm to 600mm in depth, 750 to 2400mm in length and 400 to 2400mm in height. The transformations enable the Cabinet to suit a variety of contexts from low, compact console or sideboard at the perimeter of a space, to a tall storage cabinet or partition.

X 750 - 2400

Y 400 - 600

Z 400 - 2400

Cat in Bag ii & iii Table DOWNLOADS The Cat in Bag ii and iii Tables are free standing tables. They have 2 different kinds of S/Z joint connections, with 8 total connections in a Cat in Bag ii or 12 connections in the Cat in Bag iii. The Tables are comprised of 2-5 different kinds of pieces and 5 pieces total. The table’s rotationally symmetrical pieces lock together with a pressure fit, requiring no hardware or adhesives.

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08 TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

X 500 - 1800

2-5

5

Y 500 - 1800

Z 300 - 1000

The Cat in Bag ii and iii Table shapes can be transformed from 500 to 1800mm in width and depth to situate them in a variety of shaped contexts. The Table heights can be adjusted from 300mm to 1000mm, and they can be shaped to aggregate or flock with multiple Cat in Bag Tables to form larger configurations that fill a space.

Open Storage Unit DOWNLOADS The Open Storage Unit is a modular open shelving unit. It has 3 different kinds of S/Z joint connections and 7 different kinds of pieces, with total connections and pieces within one Cabinet determined by its number of shelves and dividers.

The Cabinet’s parts lock together to form a strong vierendeel frame that carries items of varying size across a long span.

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TRANSFORMATION DESIGN

X 400 - 2400

Y 400 - 600

Z 600 - 2400

The Open Storage Unit can be transformed dimensionally from 400 to 2400mm in width, 600 to 2400mm in height and 400 to 600mm in depth to situate it in a variety of contexts. The shelf and divider quantities can be set as required, and organized by a constant or non-linear variable. The back can be a single piece or split into a two-piece bikini.

Beside Table DOWNLOADS The Beside Table is a side table with one storage compartment that sits alongside other furniture pieces. It has 2 different kinds of S/Z joint connections with 11 connections within a single Table. It has 6 different kinds of pieces, with 11 pieces total. The Table’s bilaterally symmetrical tapered leg assemblies support heavy storage loads.

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11 TRANSFORMATION DESIGN The Side Table transforms dimensionally from 450 to 1000mm in width and depth to accommodate storage within and on top of it. Its height adjusts from 405 to1000mm to serve as a low table that accompanies seating or to function alongside work surfaces of varying heights. Its single storage compartment grows with the Table’s overall height, width and depth.

X 450 - 1000

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11 Y 450 - 1000

Z 405 - 1000

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In a little over two years, room 7-408 has transformed from what was once a plotter room into the Keller gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s school of architecture & planning. Through a generous gift by Shawn Keller, principal of C.W. Keller & Associates, the Keller Gallery opened with its first exhibition in the fall of 2011.

With nineteen exhibitions and counting, the Keller has already accomplished much in the way of creating a shared space for the several different communities that pass by and through its door. Part of a larger series of initiatives set forward by Nader Tehrani, who is the current head of the department of architecture, the gallery brings the spirit of debate, ambition, and design into the heart of the school—through and for the faculty and student community. Sarah Hirschman, who helped to launch the curatorial direction of the gallery as its first director, puts it best when she writes that the Keller “uses physicality to get everyone in the room.” As her successor, I cannot think of a better way to sum things up.

The central motivation for such a small gallery—and one less plotting room—is the regenerative challenge to put forth an answer to the question: How to display architecture?

Seemingly simple, this act—one that shifts scales, translates intentions, and relocates our gaze—grows increasingly less straightforward. The simplicity of this question is further amplified by the diminutive dimensions of the gallery. Its size affords only so much and thus forces our exhibitors to be focused, edited, and abbreviated, using limited means to make the strongest conceptual statement. An exhibition at the Keller is conceived as a One-Idea space, a One-Building space, or a miniature exhibit, among a range of other tropes.

As the discipline itself takes on greater, less or simply different responsibilities, the Keller attempts to both reason and argue with the assumptions that have taken hold while we went about our business.

A combination of project images, opening photos, and texts, Incremental Change is one of six compact publications that touch upon the immediacy of the exhibition itself, as well as a consideration of the context and conversations that surround it. These collected books do not pretend to recreate the exhibition experience, but rather aspire to expand what we see and what we discuss, as we continue to make architecture in varying formats, and across academic and professional work.

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