On the occasion of the 2005 Cologne Furniture Fair, Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram presented their project BREEDING TABLES (2003 — ongoing) for the first time. Invited to design a restaurant environment, Kram and Weisshaar chose to release the first 14 prototypes of the BREEDING TABLE series and directly put them to use.

The BREEDING TABLES are born out of rethinking contemporary production processes. In front of the ongoing debate about the changes brought on by the decline of manufacturing in Europe this project endeavours to take advantage of latent potential within existing industrial structures by designing a process rather than a single product. The output of their algorithm based process is an infinite number of unique products — in this case tables — that can be made at competitive cost compared to modern age standardized mass manufacturing.

For the Cologne presentation the first 14 unique BREEDING TABLES prototypes were paired with Jean Prouvé chairs — custom made by VITRA in light blue and white colours specified by Weisshaar and Kram to match the tables. The designers placed huge mirror foils covering the entire 8 meter tall front and rear walls of the space. In this way the restaurant area appeared to expand infinitely, extending the visual diversity exemplified by the prototype BREEDING TABLES. A 4x6 meter video projection suspended above the restaurant space displayed computer animations output by the BREEDING TABLES software and videos of the development processes behind the project.

Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram’s design for the BREEDING TABLES proposes a new industrial logic based on mass-individualization which enables an artisan-like model to suddenly gain relevance again: variation and customization become eminently possible at costs approaching that of mass manufactured products.