Made to Measure
wood, cardboard
2019

Children spend most of the school day seated, their ‘work’ confined to A4 books. To explore this, I built replica tables and life-size child models scaled to the average heights of three-, four-, and five-year-olds in England.

While researching table specifications online, I was bombarded with adverts for concentration aids, which I recreated to exact specifications—highlighting the obsession with standardization in a system driven by high-stakes testing.

I also made a miniature version, just 10% the size of the original. Placed next to its life-size counterpart, it loses all function, becoming almost absurd. This satirizes its commercial promise while prompting viewers to question the impact such tools have on education. Through scale and scrutiny, the ordinary becomes uncanny, and its intended purpose collapses under its own absurdity.