Thomas Thwaites has travelled to mines across the country to get the raw materials for his toaster. Processing these raw materials at home (for example he smelted iron ore in a microwave), he has produced a 'kind of half-baked, handmade pastiche' of a toaster you can buy in Argos for less than five pounds. Thwaites said he values his handmade toaster and that he'll never throw it away. "Maybe when we're in school each of us should assemble our own toaster, our own kettle, our own little microwave or something, then perhaps we'd be more likely to keep these things for longer, and repair and look after them. This would mean these products would be more than things that just come 'from the shops.'" So, firstly, yes, I realise toasting bread over a fire would’ve been a lot easier. But was a piece of toast (or designing a better toaster) really the point of this project? He ended up figuring something out, I forget what it was. But I was also appreciative of the chemistry lesson of plastics too. I didn’t realize that at room temperature, most of the stuff of plastics would normally be a gas, but that under pressure the atoms start lining up and bonding with one another, it’s apparently very complicated, and as was explained to the author by one chemist, ‘there’s a reason we weren’t making plastics a thousand years ago: It’s really hard to do.” Secondly, yes I realise I cheated quite a lot! Though I really did naively set out with the intention of only using pre-industrial tools and methods, I soon realised that a) it was impossible, and b) by taking things like trains, or using wikipedia, or even not making my own shoes for walking to a mine, I was already in a sense ‘cheating’. In the end my view is that it’s the cheating rather than slavishly following the rules that make the project more interesting, and lead to discussions of questions other than whether it’s possible to make a toaster alone.

I found it a bit disappointing that the author's aim was to reproduce a 'modern' toaster from raw materials, which turned out to be quite impossible from early on in the book. The author then goes on to cut quite a few corners to 'sort of' make a modern toaster out of raw materials, and the conclusion is rather ambiguous as to the success of his endeavour. 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 thereader 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. years later I'm staring at the dome of the Pantheon, the largest concrete dome in the world, and frescos of a spherical earth from ancient Rome. All knowledge, that was once lost or disputed: concrete construction and science. I realized it could be lost and that all knowledge is institutional and incremental. I have mixed feelings about this book. The concept of a man making a toaster completely from scratch is definitely interesting, and the author is quite entertaining in his writing. My high school chemistry teacher once asked us the question if all human knowledge was lost, could we build a TV tomorrow. I thought it was very interesting on the premise that human knowledge is increment and that it can and has been lost before. I thought about it a bit, namely, the complex electronics and decided that no, I couldn't build a TV from scratch.Weekly updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Plus occasional news. Dezeen Awards

The last chapter has several thoughtful passages about the collision of industrialization and the environment: Some experts believe the feathers of birds evolved from reptilian scales. Through the forces of evolution, scales gradually became small feathers, which were used for warmth and insulation at first. Eventually, these small fluffs developed into larger feathers capable of flight.News from Dezeen Events Guide, a listings guide covering the leading design-related events taking place around the world. Plus occasional updates. Dezeen Awards China I would recommend “The Toaster Project” to anybody that appreciates looking at things in a different perspective. I say this, because this book is very thought provoking, in the way that it takes technology we are all familiar with, takes it, and turns it into something that is completely unfamiliar to us. Thomas Thwaites’s main point of view throughout the story is how reliant we are on other people, to the point that we don’t know how to use relatively simple technology. “My attempt to make a toaster has shown me just how reliant we all are on everyone else in the world… It also has brought into sharp focus the amount of history, struggle, thought, energy, and material that go into even something as mundane as an electric toaster.” (Thwaites 176). This quote from the story makes me think about how complex our society really is. It made me think about how I don’t have any clue about how simple technology works. Then I took this one step further. Products like computers are so complex, I wouldn’t even know where to start if somebody asked me how one works. Throughout the story, Thomas Thwaites makes There is a book of the toaster project, published by Princeton Architectural Press, and which has Japanese and Korean editions!

As an aside, this was a book, obviously, but it was also his final project for his degree, so he was on a timeline. He had 9 months to make this toaster from scratch. Microwaves, as we all know, are just so much more convenient - and so I tried to replicate the industrial process outlined in the patent using a domestic microwave. After some not-so-careful experimentation which necessitated another microwave, followed by some careful experimentation, I got the timing and ingredients right and made a blob of iron about as big as a 10p coin. When it came time to create the plastic case for his toaster, Thwaites realized he would need crude oil to make the plastic. This time, he called up BP and asked if they would fly him out to an oil rig and lend him some oil for the project. They immediately refused. It seems oil companies aren’t nearly as generous as iron mines. Thirdly, I now know about the essay I, Pencil, written from the perspective of a pencil ‘as told to Leonard E. Read’, and I think it’s fantastic!

Three things that this book does well are as follows. Thomas uses lots of research and planning before starting his project and took good notes and evidence of this, for Instance he showed how he was planning on making a common household toaster, not something that just makes bread turn into toast. secondly, he shows how he creates the toaster very well, evidence in this is when he uses the furnace to smelt iron, he shows his struggle to create the furnace. lastly Thomas Talks to a lot of people that have experience and knowledge of what he's trying to do, a good example of this is when he is talking to a professor about creating plastic and the professor says it's nearly impossible. The first step was getting iron, to make steel. He arranged a visit to an iron mine, and he got iron. He then smelted the iron, and turned it into steel. He had his first raw material. Later

We know more now, don’t we? We are more expert than our ancestors, aren’t we? Yet, at the same time, we are also reliant on the knowledge they produced.” Thwaites had to settle for collecting plastic scraps and melting them into the shape of his toaster case. This is not as easy as it sounds. The homemade toaster ended up looking more like a melted cake than a kitchen appliance. News about our Dezeen Awards programme, including entry deadlines and announcements. Plus occasional updates. Dezeen Events Guide 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.In the end, despite the rather somber last couple of chapters, I really enjoyed this, it’s a brilliant concept that I have thought about a lot over the years (not building a toaster, specifically, but about how hard it is to really make something from scratch), and loved to see it broken down the way this toaster problem was here.