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Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch
Princeton Architectural Press
October 2011
On Sale: September 28, 2011
192 pages
ISBN: 1568989970
EAN: 9781568989976
Kindle: B007N209P4
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
Where do our things really come from? China is the most
common answer, but Thomas Thwaites decided he wanted to know
more. In The Toaster Project, Thwaites asks what lies behind
the smooth buttons on a mobile phone or the cushioned soles
of running sneakers. What is involved in extracting and
processing materials? To answer these questions, Thwaites
set out to construct, from scratch, one of the most
commonplace appliances in our kitchens today: a toaster. The
Toaster Project takes the reader on Thwaites s journey from
dismantling the cheapest toaster he can find in London to
researching how to smelt metal in a fifteenth-century
treatise. His incisive restrictions all parts of the toaster
must be made from scratch and Thwaites had to make the
toaster himself made his task difficult, but not impossible.
It took nine months and cost 250 times more than the toaster
he bought at the store. In the end, Thwaites reveals the
true ingredients in the products we use every day. Most
interesting is not the final creation but the lesson
learned. The Toaster Project helps us reflect on the costs
and perils of our cheap consumer culture and the
ridiculousness of churning out millions of toasters and
other products at the expense of the environment. If
products were designed more efficiently, with fewer parts
that are easier to recycle, we would end up with objects
that last longer and we would generate less waste
altogether. Foreword by David Crowley, head of critical
writing at the Royal College of Art and curator at the
Victoria and Albert Museum.
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