In the world of Allan Wexler, the beauty of a well-designed Braun coffeemaker exists as much in the steps it took to produce it as it does in the finished product. Hence the kit of disassembled Braun parts, exhibited in one Wexler show, hinting at a kind of meditative domestic ritual for 20th-century Western consumer society: What if building the machine was an instrumental part of making the coffee?

Wexler, who teaches at the Pratt Institute, trained as an architect but is an architect of ideas as much as of things, operating at the juncture of architecture, art, interior design, and philosophy. When he builds something, it is more than the thing in itself: His White-Picket Chairs, for example, are a meditation on the inevitable boundaries that arise between neighbors. His tables are examinations of the social functions that such objects serve. His Crate House studied the components of the American home, displaying its curios "like a diorama at an anthropological museum." Wexler's work has been displayed in numerous national and international solo shows, as well as profiled in a number of books, including Custom Built: A Twenty Year Survey of Work by Allan Wexler.

Among Wexler's projects are "In the Shadow of the Wind," a community picnic ground incorporating wind power for Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany, and a design for walking paths and pavilions for Atlanta's Chastain Park. Another, "Tables of Content," is a series of functional and sculptural picnic tables for Douglas Park in Santa Monica. Wexler was the winner of a George Nelson Design Award, and he has previously won awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts in Architecture and the New York State Council on the Arts.