From gekgasifier.com:

"The Gasifier Experimenters Kit (GEK) offers beginners through experts an easy way build and customize a wide variety of gasifier types and run configurations. Whether you’re a DIY power enthusiast, university researcher, or industrial engineer, the GEK will get you quickly over the starting hurdles of gasification, and on to the more rewarding work of making power and making biochar.

The GEK is designed in a modular fashion for easy switch out between common reactor types and operating regimes. You can use the GEK to run an expertly configured downdraft gasifier for running engines and generating electricity. Or you can use the same base to create a pyrolysis retort for biochar making and soil studies. Each reactor is a separate assembly that bolts into a common gas cowling and ash handling base. Within each reactor type, all variables are easily adjusted and sub-assemblies are simply replaced via standardized “bolt to” flanges.

This modular design makes it easy to add performance parts and process elaborations as your needs require. Gasifiers are seldom “one design fits all”. Different fuels and different uses require different solutions. Thus the GEK is designed for easy integration of add-ons and customizations such as: auger fuel feed, in-situ fuel drying, IC exhaust gas heat recovery, active tar recycling systems, electronic instrumentation and control, and automated ash removal systems.

The result of is a uniquely powerful “LEGO system” of biomass thermal conversion. The GEK gives you access to all the commonly discussed, but rarely implemented “expert solutions”, and does so at the smaller-scale and lesser price relevant for personal energy projects.

The GEK project is solving the longstanding problems of small-scale gasification and pyrolysis. We invite you to join us on the cutting edge of the adventure– or least follow the derivatives via one of our growing number of imitators . . ."

From september 2009 until january 2010 two OS workshops were held at the Design Academy Eindhoven.

The students were asked to design objects that:
- relate to the grid, (either dimensionally or through applying the OS assembly point pattern)
- could be easily disassembled and reassembled (as if it were a puzzle)

We also asked the students to look at each others work and in search for possible combinations between their projects. copy / pasting was encouraged, and co-creation was stimulated

The workshop was meant to further 'Beta-test' the OS concept and to learn from the feedback and outcomes of the students.

One of the main things that the outcomes learned us was that common diameters of 4, 8, 12 or 16cm were often used by the students as common interfaces between different components. We therefor added these diameters into the next version of the OS ruler.

Recipient
by Hanae Shimizu.

A set of components, all based on a shared inner diameter of 8cm, that can be configurated into different objects and combined with existing recipients by using a yellow rubber band.

Research on the dimensions of existing recipients.
by Hanae Shimizu

Concept sketches and technical drawings by Hanae Shimizu.

Research on component combinations based on a common diameter of around 8cm.
by Eva Smeltekop.

A series of found objects were combined and held together with a piece of elastic rubber (from a balloon).
The objective of this research was to document the diversity of object typologies that emerge through the combination of just a few components.

Lamp
by Matthijs Holland.

The lamp can be fully disassembled.
Some of the individual parts are currently integrated in the design of a sunscreen by Louise Knoppert.

Concept drawing
by Eva Smeltekop

Bag
by Sara Acosta

The OS grid is used as a pattern.
The fabric is kept together by leather squares with metal knobs.

Construction elements in casted bronze.
by Martijn van der Velden

Diversity within uniformity:
By casting all modular elements in bronze and finishing them off with different techniques a collection of unique yet compatible components is created.
The dimensions of all elements are based on a 2x2x2cm square.

Reconverted closet
by Linde Tangelder

The grid is made visible on a second hand closet hereby indicating possible second uses of the individual parts after cutting.

Excellent social housing concept by the Chilean architecture office Elemental

50% of the house is built, 50% is left to the inhabitants to self-build over time, allowing the housing structure to grow and adapt.

Back in the 1950s Ken Isaacs was already proposing a modular system, based on inch measures, that he offered to the crowds through several design manuals that explained step by step how his designs could be reproduced. His manuals could be bought for just 4.95$! (I recently managed to purchase a copy through Amazon for 150$ ...)