At the invitation of curator Libby Sellers, Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram have designed a site-specific installation of their BREEDING TABLES project for the TANK at The Design Museum in London. Situated on the banks of the river Thames, the installation will run from January 12 to April 20, 2006. The BREEDING TABLES project, developed over the course of the years 2003 to 2005, is their seminal example of intelligently intertwining product development and media design, while taking advantage of the newest technological possibilities.

“Throughout the 20th century advances in technology enabled designers and manufacturers to produce standardised products in such large quantities that they were affordable to millions of people. At the start of the 21st century technology has become so sophisticated that today’s designers are using it to create customised products, each with a distinctive identity, at the same speed and volume as traditional massmanufacturing.

Among them are the German-Swedish design team of Reed Kram and Clemens Weisshaar, who work together from their respective studios in Munich and Stockholm. For this BREEDING TABLES project KRAM/ WEISSHAAR programmed computer design software to act ‘as a kind of digital sweatshop, constantly shooting out proposals from which we choose and refine the most promising.’ Using algorithmic modelling sequences and CNC (computer numerically controlled) production they created — or bred — an infinite number of table shapes based on a set criteria of height, structure and stability.

Once the tables were cut and shaped by machine, each of their powder coated steel components was handfinished by skilled technicians. Kram and Weisshaar regard this process of merging mass manufacturing, hand craftsmanship and infinite design possibilities as a new model for combining the efficiency of an industrial assembly line with the idiosyncratic charm of hand-crafted objects while sustaining the skills of local craftspeople.”
(Libby Sellers, Curator, the Design Museum, London)

The outcome of the BREEDING TABLES process is not a single table, but an indefinite number of unique tables. The exhibition layout for the Design Museum therefore reflects both the realized final result of the project, a singular one of a kind table, as well as the potential for limitless variation inherent in the process. An individual finished BREEDING TABLE rests gently atop a wealth of possible leg shapes representing the evolutionary substratum that make up the construction of each table.