What is a Max Hack?
A Max Hack is a practical, elegant and unpretentious on the fly hack for solving a problem, creating a tool or improving a process. Frequently done inexpensively with surplus parts or whatever else is at hand.
Most people who had the opportunity to work with Max can recall one of his utilitarian solutions.
One day while sitting in Max and Marge Mathews’ living room, I realized that the lamp on the side table was made from a 4″ diameter black PVC pipe. Max pointed out that other portions of that pipe made up the coffee table. They told me that when they first moved to San Francisco, they didn’t bring much furniture with them from New Jersey. They had gotten drawn into a marathon documentary series on PBS and wanted to have somewhere to eat their dinner while they watched TV. During a walk, they spotted the pipe and a broken table. The solution was obvious and with extra pipe to spare, they had matching table lamps.
In the hopes of keeping this spirit alive and sharing innovative solutions, when we post projects on this blog, we will try to list at least one Max Hack that someone has implemented in their project.