Following the initial installation titled 0 SERIES shown during the Cologne Furniture Fair in January 2005, Reed Kram and Clemens Weisshaar were invited by Ingo Maurer to show the BREEDING TABLES project during the Salone del Mobile in Milan at Spazio Krizia. The title for the exhibition: LA RACCOLTA - Italian for "the Harvest" - illustrates the linking of virtual and physical, standing at the core of the BREEDING TABLES project.

With the BREEDING TABLES Kram and Weisshaar bid farewell the idea of designing one product to be mass manufactured as a reproduction of the original prototype. In fact they have developed a process that allows for the production of a multitude of individually different pieces of furniture - tapping the full potential of current production technologies.

The designers have conceived a process hinged upon custom computer code that generates an indefinite number of solid construction surfaces. Taking into account the specifications of parameters like height, depth, width and load capacity, these computer-generated cutting patterns and associated processing information orchestrate computer controlled laser cutters and bending machines, and seamlessly materialize threedimensional corpuses.

The flexibility of present-day machines allows for the continuous implementation of modifications. The opening now emerges for the constant production of unique pieces under the conditions and within the budget of mass production. The BREEDING TABLES' peculiarity lies not only in their aesthetic qualities, but in the inherent reflection upon the potentialities of contemporary production facilities and conditions. In this sense, they stand for a new form of integrated product and process development, for a new way of thinking design.

LA RACCOLTA calls attention to the process behind the growth the tables through the use of an evolutionary presentation in which all stages of the development process are exposed. The methods developed for generating and manufacturing the tables are presented in both physical form as well as a media projection. The projected animation shows image sequences captured from the virtual construction surfaces generating, fields of tables bred within the computer, and videos taken during the manufacturing process of the tables. The physical process behind the creation of the tables is revealed through presenting a comprehensive physical catalogue of the working process in a line: steel offcut and cutout components from the laser cutter, the bent table legs after leaving the computer-controlled bending machine and the final product: BREEDING TABLE #525.

The entire installation BREEDING TABLES: LA RACCOLTA was acquired by Centre Pompidou for their renowned design collection shortly after its debut at Spazio Krizia in Milan during Salone del Mobile, April 2005.