Most writing about modular furniture talks about flexibility. About being able to rearrange things, expand the system, take it with you when you move. These are real benefits. But they are consequences of something more fundamental, and I don't think that underlying idea gets named clearly very often.
Here it is: the goal of a modular system is to find the smallest set of components from which the largest number of configurations can be generated. That is the actual problem. Everything else follows from how well you solve it.
It sounds straightforward. It isn't.
A component that only makes sense as part of a larger whole is not well designed. Neither is a system whose parts don't combine into anything coherent. Both conditions have to be true simultaneously — each piece correct in itself, and the collection correct as a whole. Getting there requires more precision than it might appear.
When we settled on 24" and 36" as our two hangtrack widths, it looked like a practical decision. Two sizes, manageable to produce, enough variety for most walls. But the choice is more precise than that.
Two feet and three feet are the first two prime numbers. The useful property of primes is that they share no common factors — which means any combination of twos and threes produces a unique total, with no gaps and no redundancy. Two plus three is five. Two plus two is four. Three plus two plus two is seven. You can reach any whole-number width from two feet upward using only these two values.
The minimum set. The maximum range of configurations.
I explained this to my daughter once as an example of why prime numbers are interesting. She understood it immediately, which I took as a good sign. It is, it turns out, also a reasonable way to design a shelving system.
0 comments