One of the most recurring problems in our everyday lives is the fact that, not knowing how ordinary appliances work, when they break down we often opt for the easy way out - buying new ones. Todd McLellan is not fascinated by the disposable culture we live in, but by the art of disassembling the items surrounding us to make us realise what we are throwing away.
The volume Things Come Apart: A Teardown Manual for Modern Living, recently published by Thames & Hudson, is a record of McLellan's obsession, developed as a child when he would disassemble his toys to see how they were made.
The author proceeded to take 50 designs - among them brand new or vintage items that he divided in four categories, small, medium, large and extra-large - disassembled them till their last screw and took pictures of them with their parts lying flat on a surface or suspended in mid-air.
The book opens with a mechanical pencil, but features (among the others) a digital and a mechanical watch juxtaposed one to the next; game consoles; an iPad and iPod; a smartphone; a handheld GPS unit (that has actually got just a few more components than a basic torch...); an external drive; a record player; a mantel clock from 1928; a classic flip clock from the '70s; a rotary telephone from the '80s, a telescope and domestic appliances such as a hair dryer or a toaster; a basic desk lamp and a power drill, a snowblower, and even musical instruments (did you know that an accordion includes 1,465 components?). You name it, McLellan has probably dismantled it.
Leaf through the book and you will discover that a walkman featured hundreds of components, obviously many more than our tiny digital music players; a camera from 1973 has instead almost the same number of components than a digital camera made last year (576 against 580); a children's wagon is more complicated in terms of components than a push lawnmower, while a laptop computer has got slighty more pieces (639) than a classic typewriter from the '60s even though, once dismantled, the latter is visually more pleasing, with its 621 components forming a rather striking display including zigzagging typebars.
Some images are genuine works of art as the author assembled the various pieces with the careful eye of a painter (see the picture of a disassembled bicycle from the '80s with its components lying on a flat surface in a visually pleasing way). Other pictures highlight the difference between old and new items: the former were assembled by hand and were made to be repaired and last. This is proved by latches that could easily be opened; new items are instead too often made to break down and are not produced with a fixer in mind (anybody who attempted to repair a new generation game console for the first time found themselves in front of oddly shaped proprietary screws that need special screwdrivers to be unlocked...).
The author is not encouraging readers to go berserk and tear down assorted appliances, tools and machines, but to try and understand them and learn in this way to be more active while also saving money and protecting the environment. To this aim, the volume also features four essays by different experts: Kyle Wiens, co-founder and CEO of free online repair community iFixit, known for product teardowns and open-sorce service manuals, tells the fascinating story of Japanese doctor Mitsunobu "Kodawarisan" Tanaka who started taking things apart and photographing them as a hobby, to remind us the importance of knowing how something works to be able to repair and adapt it.
Software engineer and computer scientist Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School that organises week-long camps for children to teach them how to use power tools, and build and solve problems, recounts us his personal experiences in this successful and slightly crazy venture; Penny Bendall, ceramics conservator, unveils the secrets of restoring the Chelsea Group, highlighting how fascinating it is to deconstruct and reconstruct a work of art.
The last essay is the most fascinating from a technological point of view as its author, Dr Joseph Chiodo, inventor of the Active Disassembly technology, explains readers how new techniques and materials can facilitate the processes of separating and recovering components during recyling phases. Chiodo writes about Thermoplastic Hot-Melt Adhesives for Disassembly (THMAD), Hot Wire Adhesive Release (HWAR) and the fascinating Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) and Shape Memory Polymers (SMP) hinting at the fact that these new technologies may help us preserving the environment while creating new jobs.
McLellan closes the volume with deconstructed displays of large items: an upright piano from 1912 (1,842 components) and, believe it or not, a Zenith CH650 aircraft (7,580 components), that the author photographed at the manufacturer's hangar. McLellan's journey through 21,959 components is fascinating but it also proves that, while what surrounds us is disposable, most of the times it is not necessarily transitory, but could be fixed or reused to create new products - if only we had the will and knowledge to do so.
Things Come Apart: A Teardown Manual for Modern Living by Todd McLellan is published by Thames & Hudson.
All photographs in this post by and courtesy of Todd McLellan.
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