It's interesting to see how advances in technology and manufacturing techniques often automatically move product aesthetics towards minimalism. For example, once upon a time doors had to look like this:
The plank door on the left was made from the widest pieces of wood you could conveniently get at the time, and the door on the right is made with panels--free-floating pieces of wood sitting within a framework, to compensate for seasonal expansion and contraction--because back then there was no non-expanding plywood.
Then along came veneers and hollow-door technology, and we get doors that look like this:
Similarly, installing electrical sockets was once a fairly brutish business that consisted of cutting an ugly, imperfect hole in the wall and covering it with a flange, so:
Now a company called Trufig has perfected kits for installing sockets--and light switches, dimmers, ethernet ports, keypads, touchscreens, and all the other crap we have in our walls these days--that does away with the flanges altogether.
As Trufig puts it, "We are the aesthetic treatments for other manufacturers' devices."
[Trufig] kits consist of rigid flat panels with integrated recessed back boxes. A panel is secured to a wall's studs, and sheetrock is installed around it. A contractor tapes off the seams, muds over the seams, and feathers the mud so the panel disappears after painting. Installers use spacers to place a device into a box. The device is then covered by a flush-mount fascia held in place by magnets, eliminating visible screws.
As you can see, retrofitting the kits would be a pain in the wazoo, but we can expect to see installations like these in newly constructed homes and offices.
via twice
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