We live in a world of vehicles and machinery made up of a million different moving parts and hyper-specialised tech guts. Using nothing more than a modified moped motor, Gaspard Tiné-Berès and Tristan Kopp of Re-Do Studio imagined a future where a single modular Engine Block can be used to power everything from a small boat to a cement mixer.
They put together the project as part of Ljubljana’s 50th Biennial of Industrial Design, and started with a (very) creative vision: In an “apocalyptic” future ravaged by economic turmoil, these mix-and-match generators will be the key to a new kind of hands-on maker movement, where people (re)learn what it takes to make their goods go. In other words: “A guy fixes old tools by using a unique engine to run all of them,” as Tiné-Berès told We Make Money Not Art.
It’s conceptual, sure, but they also made it work with a prototype proof of concept (shot in a ultra-dramatic, sci-fi style vid). The duo partnered with Tomos, a Slovenian scooter manufacturer, to source the engine, then adapted it to work with a boat, a saw, a cement mixer, and — of course — a moped.
The reality of a one-size-fits-all engine is not necessarily practical, but the idea does speak to a kind of industrious tinkering that most folks wouldn’t bother to consider in their day to day lives — which falls in line with their Re-Done home appliance and bike projects from a few years back which saw cheap, bound-for-the-trash miscellany being fixed up rather than tossed out. Apocalyptic futures aside, their commitment to encouraging resourcefulness rather than waste is one we should definitely be paying attention to now. [We Make Money Not Art]