QuaDror in Action

In this month's issue, Prefab Perfected, we report on QuaDror, a structural joint system devised by designer Dror Benshetrit that Contributing Editor Marc Kristal calls a "diabolically brain-twisting" system. The premise is simple, yet not immediatelys grasped: Four identical L-shaped brackets at cross angles to one another slide open to create a welter of triangular trusses. Benshetrit first breathed word of it to me in 2009 at Design Miami, and the system launched this year with applications as varied as a prefab house from weeHouse to a roadside barrier. Read about QuaDror in this month's issue, or check out the videos below to hear and see how the splendid new design platform works.
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QuaDror from Dror on Vimeo.

This video (above) is a perfect visual tour through what the joint at the heart of QuaDror can do. Watch it morph from a desk to a bridge, from a room divider to disaster relief shelter. When Benshetrit first told me about the system (all in very vague terms over a coffee at Fratelli Lyon in Miami's Design District) he mentioned that it had applications from a residence he was considering in Central America to a lamp. Little did I realize that he actually meant this lamp, which was on view back in the Design Miami tent not 100 yards away. 

Perhaps my favorite of the QuaDror videos, however, is this one (below), that shows just how quickly a disaster relief structure could be erected, and, considering it seems to be built in a junkyard, how variable the component materials can be.

Relief Structure build up from Dror on Vimeo.

Finally, here's Benshetrit talking about QuaDror, as well as where his sense of design, comes from at the QuaDror launch at Design Indaba 2011 in South Africa.

Dror Benshetrit at DI2011 from Design Indaba on Vimeo.

Aaron Britt
Aaron writes the men's style column "The Pocket Square" for the San Francisco Chronicle and has written for the New York Times, the Times Magazine, Newsweek, National Geographic and others.

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