Designing and creating underwrite making by federating a great deal of knowledge imparted by professional education, training or by specific guidelines and normalisation. The democratization of timber construction, in particular, communicates this collective sharing of artisans’ methods, cutting standards and normalized joinery. Industrialization substituted the artisan with task division, placed knowledge in the hands of engineers and manufacturers and made specialized components or pieces the core of modern building culture. The ensuing normalisation significantly diversified production. A quick walk in any hardware store in the connector aisle presents the innumerable amount of ready-made hangers, straps, fasteners and couplings for putting two pieces of timber together. While removing the specialized artisan, these factory-made fasteners also make it possible for untrained users build their own structures with the confidence that the connector is robust and sturdy enough for its intended use. The connector fashioned with the correct dimensions, thickness and angles simplify joinery and have long contributed to the D-I-Y building and the recent hacking culture. Producing a connector that is both simple to use and understand in a sense elevates its designer’s status to craftsman as the device’s use in multiple structures showcases inherited purposes and potentials for customizable assemblies.
Patch Project by the Polish design studio Beza Projekt continues the tradition of the Do- it-yourself well-designed connector by streamlining making and providing anyone the means to craft their own projects. Patch Project showcases the designer at once as the developer and the artisan for crowd sourced productions. A series of bright red plates folded and shaped into different configurations offer a number of varying ways of joining standardized pieces of timber. Analogous to Ken Isaac’s modular matrix structures developed in the 1970s, the connectors are the basis of a perceived variety established on predetermined options for geometric adaptations. In Patch Project the connectors are meant to symbolize a type of conceptual patchwork arrangement with encoded yet unspecified directions. Each timber piece can be placed at right angles or at predetermined angles for both ordered and chaotic arrangements. This type of connector is a special architectural object as it imparts building knowledge and makes construction a fundamentally social process connecting design, craft and people.
Patch Project connectors' series
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