Things Fall Together - by Skylar Tibbits (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A short, provocative manifesto for the programmable materials revolution from the visionary founder of MIT's Self-Assembly Lab"--

Book Synopsis

From the visionary founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, a manifesto for the dawning age of active materials

Things in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Personal items deteriorate. Yet today's researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that physically sense, adapt, and fall together instead of apart. These materials open new directions for industrial innovation and challenge us to rethink the way we build and collaborate with our environment. Things Fall Together is a provocative guide to this emerging, often mind-bending reality, presenting a bold vision for harnessing the intelligence embedded in the material world.

Drawing on his pioneering work on self-assembly and programmable material technologies, Skylar Tibbits lays out the core, frequently counterintuitive ideas and strategies that animate this new approach to design and innovation. From furniture that builds itself to shoes printed flat that jump into shape to islands that grow themselves, he describes how matter can compute and exhibit behaviors that we typically associate with biological organisms, and challenges our fundamental assumptions about what physical materials can do and how we can interact with them. Intelligent products today often rely on electronics, batteries, and complicated mechanisms. Tibbits offers a different approach, showing how we can design simple and elegant material intelligence that may one day animate and improve itself--and along the way help us build a more sustainable future.

Compelling and beautifully designed, Things Fall Together provides an insider's perspective on the materials revolution that lies ahead, revealing the spectacular possibilities for designing active materials that can self-assemble, collaborate, and one day even evolve and design on their own.

Review Quotes

"Things Fall Together upends commonly held presumptions about how the constructed world operates. . . . We need just this kind of bold, cross-disciplinary thinking to unlock the full potential of designed materials--and to realize a future in which materiality is considered at every stage and scale of the design process."---Blaine Brownell, Architect

"[Things Fall Together] matter-of-factly, without exaggeration or hype, demonstrates that the seemingly wild idea of a biology-like technology is not impossible. . . . Tibbits has done a remarkable service in packing this gigantic vision into a short, readable book. 'Look what is coming!' he says. And we should look."---Kevin Kelly, Reason

"A subtle yet eye-catching book. . . . Things Fall Together provides an insider's perspective on the materials revolution that lies ahead."---Jenna Collignon, Western Exteriors Magazine

"Books like Things Fall Together should be required reading for students and veteran designers alike. It's time for these ideas about material intelligence to leave the lab; to commingle among designers, architects, and engineers; and to start finding their way into reality. Not just as conceptual explorations, but as part of the fabric of our everyday lives."---Luke T. Baker, Metropolis

"Finalist for the PROSE Award in Engineering and Technology, Association of American Publishers"

"Tibbits' book is a compact, highly readable explanation of the work carried out at the Self-Assembly Lab and some of the other like-minded labs and institutions around the world."---John Hill, A Daily Dose of Architecture Books

About the Author

Skylar Tibbits is founder and codirector of the Self-Assembly Lab and Associate Professor of Design Research in the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books include Active Matter and Self-Assembly Lab: Experiments in Programming Matter. He lives in Boston. Website selfassemblylab.mit.edu Twitter @SkylarTibbits Instagram @skylartibbits