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 knife holder, paired with the fork holder, that was made with Grieg Martino and Henry Adorno at United Prosthetics. Following the successful creation of a pen holder, and after using a range of other tools for eating, Cindy wanted something more bespoke. Made from a lump of silicon, with space to place a knife and hold it rigidly, it enables Cindy, in her own words, ‘to saw and cut food more precisely’. The material cost of this holder is a fraction of her myoelectric hand, which did not provide the same dexterity.