by Maria Moyer

Heads Up! There’s a movement building toward hackable, make-it-your-own design. A kind of collaboration with our favorite designers, taking their inspirations and making them work for us.

*

Brooklyn-based lighting designer, Lindsey Adelman (love her!) distributes step-by-step DIY instructions for creating a “You Make It” chandelier. Find instructions, materials list and resources here.  See what other people are making using Adelman’s instructions at le beouf. (Photo shown above, via TheBrickHouse.)

Yves Behar’s curatorial debut of “Technocraft” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SF, tells the story of designers using technology to create a new economy based on craft, individualization and customer participation. The photo above (courtesy of fuseproject), is an iconic Eames dining chair DCM hacked and personalized for a little person’s dining pleasure.

Fashion designer Natalie Chanin’s line, Alabama Chanin, is grown-to-sewn in the US and is entirely handmade by artisans in Alabama. One-of-a-kind pieces are available exclusively at luxury retailers, like Barneys New York. To make her line accessible and affordable while promoting sustainability and the preservation of depression-era stitching techniques, Alabama Chanin’s kits and books help turn fashion followers in to maker-advocates.

*

What other examples of hackable designs do you see? We’d like to hear from you.