Thomas Thwaites
Illustration — Thwaites in 2011 at Poptech in Maine • Illustration — Toaster and casing from "The Toaster Project", on display in the V&A in September 2022 Thomas Thwaites is a British designer and writer. He describes himself as "a designer (of a more speculative sort), interested in technology, science, futures research & etc."
Thomas Thwaites
PopTech from Camden, Maine and Brooklyn, NY, USA · Thomas Thwaites - PopTech 2011 - Camden Maine USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Born
- 1980
- Nationality
- United Kingdom
- Occupation
- designer · writer · artist · inventor
- Education
- University College London · Royal College of Art
- Honours
- Ig Nobel Prize
- Languages
- English
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Illustration — Thwaites in 2011 at Poptech in Maine • Illustration — Toaster and casing from "The Toaster Project", on display in the V&A in September 2022 Thomas Thwaites is a British designer and writer. He describes himself as "a designer (of a more speculative sort), interested in technology, science, futures research & etc."
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Biography
Thwaites studied economics and biology at University College London, followed by a master's degree in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art i n 2009. In a nine-month project as part of his MA course, Thwaites attempted to build a toaster from scratch. The project was inspired by a quote from Douglas Adams' 1992 novel Mostly Harmless: "Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich, and that was it." A toaster has about 400 components: he simplified the materials list to copper, steel, plastic, mica and nickel and attempted to mine, refine, and otherwise process all the raw materials needed. He published The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch, and gave a TED talk "How I Built a Toaster - From Scratch". The tools and artefacts from the project are on display as an installation in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in room 76 "Design 1900 to Now". • Illustration — The Toaster Project installation at V&A August 2017 He later spent several days living among goats in the Alps, using prosthetic goat-like legs and eating grass using an artificial rumen, to explore the life of goats. This resulted in GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human and an Ig Nobel Prize. In January 2017 he appeared on BBC Radio 4's Museum of Curiosity. His hypothetical donation to the imaginary museum was a history book written in 2222AD, covering the present time. In 2017–2018 he was a visiting professor in the Industrial Design department of Rhode Island School of Design.
Selected publications
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"The Toaster Project" installation in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, gallery 76 "Design since 1945". Illustrates an MA design project by Thomas Thwaites to construct a toaster by sourcing, refining and processing the materials (copper steel, mica, plastic and nickel) himself
PamD · Photograph taken by me in the V A
Metal toaster and its plastic casing from The Toaster Project, an MA design project by Thomas Thwaites in which he created a toaster by sourcing, refining and processing the materials (mica, copper, steel, nickel, plastic). From an installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum in room 76 "Design since 1945", seen in August 2017.
PamD
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Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Thomas Thwaites. Hello.
- 2.Thwaites, Thomas. The Toaster Project. Princeton Architectural Press. 2011. 978-1-56898-997-6.
- 3.Cangeloso, Sal. Nine month project to build a toaster from scratch results in a book, toaster-like monstrosities. Geek.
- 4.TED. How I built a toaster — from scratch. 12 January 2011.
- 5.Victoria and Albert Museum. The Toaster Project. Collections.
- 6.Barkham, Patrick. No kidding: what I learned from becoming GoatMan. The Guardian. 15 May 2016.
- 7.Graham, Chris. No kidding: Why Thomas Thwaites lived as a goat in Switzerland. The Telegraph. 28 May 2016.
- 8.BBC News. Ig Nobel win for Alpine 'goat man'. 23 September 2016.
- 9.BBC Radio 4. The Museum of Curiosity: Series 10, Episode 1.
- 10.Rhode Island School of Design. Thomas Thwaites. Industrial Design: Faculty.
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