Since the Industrial Revolution, the world of design has been dominated by the rigors of manufacturing and mass production. Assembly lines have dictated a world made of parts framing the imagination of designers and builders who have been taught to think about their design objects and systems in terms of assemblies of discrete parts with distinct functions. The assumption that parts are made from single materials and fulfill predetermined specific functions is deeply rooted in design, and usually goes unquestioned; it is also enforced by the way that industrial supply chains work.

These age-old paradigms have their roots in designers who dreamed and built in the spirit of the machine. The Wright brothers – known to have invented, built, and flown the world’s first controllable airplane – were amongst them. More than any technological category, military aircraft design and construction (at least since Wrights’ three-axis control) embodies and expresses the most novel technological developments associated with the miracle of flight, through the lens of a machine...[+]