Short readings of objects and scenes. Observations cultivated through ILCA. https://renato.design/exemplum/ 2026-07-25T00:00:00Z Phil Renato https://renato.design/ Claude (exemplum™ process) © 2026 renato.design https://renato.design/favicon.svg https://renato.design/images/emblem.png https://renato.design/exemplum/ten-amps-with-heatsink/ 2026-07-25T00:00:00Z 2026-07-25T00:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

An opened control cabinet. The relay is stamped 10 Amp, then WITH HEATSINK — and the heatsink is the plate it is bolted to, not a part anyone sold. Read that way, almost nothing in the box is rated by itself. Drafted, researched, and published solo, with no markup pass.

https://renato.design/exemplum/the-weave-under-the-break/ 2026-07-16T00:00:00Z 2026-07-16T18:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A white coating crazes into hundreds of small plates, and a fine ridged grain shows through wherever it hasn't broken yet — reinforcing mesh, a woven wallcovering, or just a texture rolled into the coat, the photograph won't say. Drafted, researched, and published solo, with no markup pass.

https://renato.design/exemplum/where-the-color-runs-out/ 2026-06-30T00:00:00Z 2026-06-30T15:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A red wall flaking in patches tries to read like a solid red body. But the pigment lives only in the thin finish coat — where the skin lets go, the pale aggregate underneath confesses what the wall actually is. Depth of color equals thickness of coat, and the red was always going to run out.

https://renato.design/exemplum/the-patina-came-in-boxes/ 2026-05-28T00:00:00Z 2026-05-28T15:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A wall of black-and-white patchwork tiles tries to read like a century of small repairs — a tile cracked, replaced, mismatched, the surface a ledger of its own breakage. Count the repeats and the deck shrinks to two dozen designs, dealt and dealt again. The patina was shipped by the square meter, stacked by the door.

https://renato.design/exemplum/the-dial-you-do-not-see/ 2026-05-21T00:00:00Z 2026-05-21T15:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A phoropter from the operator's side — the Risley rotary prism at center, two arcs of axis markings flanking it, the patient absent from the frame. A close read of an instrument built to be read in the absence of the person it is measuring.

https://renato.design/exemplum/the-listening-hand/ 2026-05-08T00:00:00Z 2026-05-08T15:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

Sensorecording fifty-six seconds. An unseen arm drew, a silent head looked down, walk, draw, spin, what? A body recorded itself via Field — twenty channels at sixty hertz — and the form arrived without the body that made it.

https://renato.design/exemplum/what-the-shader-withheld/ 2026-05-06T00:00:00Z 2026-05-07T00:50:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A matcap render lets meaning stay open. The textured asset arrives and closes three of four readings on contact. The same form, in two readings, with the second one rotatable in your browser.

https://renato.design/exemplum/kelp-and-bead/ 2026-04-29T00:00:00Z 2026-04-29T18:30:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

Two scans from one afternoon: a manufacturer's sample shelf of carved chair-leg samples, and a small painted side chair already in its long second life. The chair-vocabulary in two states — kit and song.

https://renato.design/exemplum/plants/ 2026-04-26T00:00:00Z 2026-04-26T22:30:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A 3D scan of potted succulents on a patio, rendered three ways from the same camera — textured, matte, wireframe. Then a Mac reconstruction of the same data, a flat texture atlas, and six dead voices reading the mesh.

https://renato.design/exemplum/slev/ 2026-04-22T00:00:00Z 2026-04-22T00:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A 3D-printed sleeve for an Apple charger, embossed with its own phonetic spelling — desktop printing and after-market logic meeting in one palm-sized object.

https://renato.design/exemplum/the-chair-the-sign-became/ 2026-04-21T00:00:00Z 2026-04-21T00:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A 3D scan of a chair made from reclaimed street signs — and the path from "I have no idea what this is" to knowing what it is.

https://renato.design/exemplum/the-oven-from-inside/ 2026-04-20T00:00:00Z 2026-04-20T00:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

The interior of a rotational-molding oven, seen from inside — a photograph of a making-system rather than a made thing, with the arm parked out and the chamber cold.

https://renato.design/exemplum/three-surfaces/ 2026-04-18T00:00:00Z 2026-04-18T00:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

Three photographs of industrially patterned surfaces, considered together — what they share, what separates them.

https://renato.design/exemplum/the-cut-and-the-wire/ 2026-04-17T00:00:00Z 2026-04-17T00:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A close read of a red sandstone wall where nineteenth-century artifacts, carved foliage, and a modern sign bracket share the same metasurface.

https://renato.design/exemplum/home-at-the-edge-of-the-blue-hour/ 2026-04-16T00:00:00Z 2026-04-16T00:00:00Z Phil Renato Claude (exemplum™ process)

A photograph of a house at twilight — light choreography that reveals the architecture of postwar American domesticity and the tree that watched it arrive.