The Ladder Closet
Your four references split into two families — two ladder converters and two secretaries. This is the cross-breed: the closet form fixes the ladder's racking and gives it an honest guest mode, and the ladder mechanism dissolves the fixed shelves that broke the closet. Round 1's five directions are kept below.
Where it came from — round 1
Where it came from — round 1
F · The Ladder Closet — the direction
C × D cross-breedA free-standing cabinet whose two side panels are the slotted ladder spines. The boards slide in from the front like oven racks, into shallow grooves routed across the inner faces. Sitting to standing is one move: pull each board out, slide it in three rows up.
- Height swap
- Slide two boards up three grooves. ~30 seconds, no tools, no keys, no loose parts. The monitor rides its own board and is never unplugged or lifted off.
- Guest answer
- Shut the doors. Nothing moves, nothing gets carried to a closet, the machine stays plugged in and running.
- Screwless
- 100%. Twelve tapered keys lock the shell and knock it back down to flat panels; the boards just sit in routed grooves.
- What it fixes
- Racking — the weak point of every trestle we drew. A box with a back panel is a shear wall. It also kills C's fatal flaw: a 470 mm monitor could never live between shelves 375 mm apart.
- The cost
- It is a wardrobe: 970 × 560 × 1780 mm, 85–110 kg in plywood. Demountable, but not a thing you move on a whim.
- Still open
- No toe kick when standing, and the boards have no positive lock (they jam under load, but nothing stops you pulling one out). Both are mock-up questions, not drawing-board ones.
Where it came from — round 1
A · Trestle + drop-on toppers
from round 0- Height swap
- 3 parts, tapered dovetails, ~2 min
- Guest answer
- Full teardown leans in the closet (~5 min)
- Screwless
- 100% — taper is the lock
- Risk
- Three stacked joints at standing height
B · Two-part keyed uprights
from round 0- Height swap
- 4 tapered keys re-seated, ~3–4 min
- Guest answer
- Same closet-lean teardown as A
- Screwless
- 100% — keys through half-laps
- Risk
- Short 175 mm overlap racks at standing; your pinned slot-rhythm look
C · The work-closet
new- Height swap
- Re-seat one shelf + one board, <2 min, no joinery ops
- Guest answer
- Close two doors — 10 seconds, nothing moves
- Screwless
- Wooden pin hinges (hidden); metal concealed hinges allowed as fallback
- Risk
- Big piece (1760×736×450); knees meet a pull-out board, not a deep top
D · The ladder shelf
new- Height swap
- Re-hang the desk board one rung pair, ~1 min
- Guest answer
- Boards re-hang as level shelves (étagère); the monitor takes one trip to the closet — a hung mask can’t cover it, physics said no
- Screwless
- 100% — boards hook into slot rungs
- Risk
- Cantilevered board bounce; sled feet run ~92 cm front-to-back
E · The crates
new- Height swap
- Slab off, two riser crates on, slab on — ~2 min
- Guest answer
- Monitor slides into the wide crate’s wall-facing opening — desk just looks clean
- Screwless
- 100% — battens + corner registration pins
- Risk
- Crates are heavy-ish casework; desk never fully disappears (closet-lean still available)
All four of your pins, replicated in CAD
Built by a second agent from the screenshots alone (parametric OpenSCAD, three look-and-fix cycles each). Source in replicas/.
Plywood ladder converter
Harmoni (walnut)
Plywood secretary
Flatmate fold-down (wall-mounted — reference only)
How to answer: name 1–2 favorites (or say what to steal from which — “C’s doors on E’s crates” is a legal move). Next round: the picks get real joinery, honest structure checks, and 1:6 printable joints. Also in progress: a separate agent is replicating your two pinned converters in CAD as a fidelity test — those land in replicas/.