Engineering at Home asks us to rethink what counts as engineering, and who is considered a designer. Cindy Garni’s circumstances changed after a heart attack. Following amputations involving all four limbs, she responded to her ‘new normal’ by creating small adaptations and hacks to the objects in her home. Undertaking acts of ‘everyday engineering’ she used items such as wall hooks and cable ties to give access to items where more grip is needed, or silicon tubes where a more stable surface area is required for an eye pencil. These adaptative acts can be understood as ‘design-for-one’, a concept whereby many of the objects are created by and for Cindy exclusively and may not suit others. Where these adaptations are made, the problems of existing designs are highlighted.

Cindy’s interventions were recorded for a research project called Engineering at Home, created together with artist and designer Sara Hendren and anthropologist Caitrin Lynch. Cindy, Caitrin and Sara had a series of conversations on design which resulted in a manifesto published on the Engineering at Home website. In turn, a series of reproduction objects were made to catalogue Cindy’s design interventions and those made with others. The team worked with Cindy to illustrate the ways in which her imaginative interventions prompt a reassessment of design hierarchies through a disability-first perspective. Cindy’s thinking with design expands across individual adjustments to collaborations with her prosthetists Greg Martino, Gary Martino and Henry Adorno.

This is a reproduction of the pen holder created in collaboration with Cindy’s prosthetist Greg Martino at United Prosthetics for use instead of her hi-tech myoelectric hand. Keen to write letters in her own handwriting rather than deferring to speech-to-text technology, Cindy worked with Greig to fashion a pen holder into a custom-made-device that enable greater dexterity. Made from a lump of silicon, it fits onto Cindy’s residual right hand and a hole that runs through the top allows for a standard biro to rest at a slight angle for writing.