The Disassembly Café is a workshop for exploring the inside of electronic devices and dreaming about new possibilities for everyday technology. Design is often equated with making new things. But activities such as disassembly, replicating, repairing and recycling can also play a major role in the design process. The Disassembly Café explores how taking apart existing device can be used to engage participants with diverse (and mostly non-technical) backgrounds in collaborative design processes of and with technology.

During the disassembly process, participants use a flatbed scanner to capture the disassembled parts. The scans – which often are deformed representations of their three-dimensional originals – are then used to create collages representing new devices or technologies imagined by the participants. By embracing the artefacts and dissociations that stem from disassembling and scanning three-dimensional objects, The Disassembly Café triggers the imagination of the participants and encourages them to express their ideas and dreams of technology in a hybrid design language that is in between a sketch and prototype.

Photos: David Schwarzman