“If you look at how things are manufactured at every other scale other than the human scale–look at DNA and cells and proteins, then look at the planetary scale–everything is built through self assembly,” he says. “But at the human scale, it’s the opposite. Everything is built top down. We take components and we force them together.”

Tibbits is a research scientist in MIT’s department of architecture, but his title belies the radical nature of his work. At MIT, he’s developing materials and objects that can be programmed to assemble themselves. In 2011, he set up a lab to experiment with 4D printing, a process that uses 3D printers to produce material that will grow and change on its own. Since then, the Self-Assembly Lab, which Tibbits runs with co-director Jared Laucks, has been experimenting with a series of materials that can be “programmed” to self-construct. They’ve come up with flat-pack furniture that can build itself, for instance, as well as the textile that could make self-lacing sneakers possible.

Now, in collaboration with designer Marcelo Coelho, who runs an eponymous design studio in Cambridge, Tibbits and his team are applying their work to consumer electronics.

Still in its infancy, their new project explores how with a few components, a source of energy, and the right interactions, a cell phone could “build itself,” without the need for human or even high-tech automation. Not only does the project demonstrate Tibbit’s research into self-assembly on a practical level, it could also have major implications on manufacturing.

Depending on the speed of the tumbler, it can take under a minute.

The original impetus for the project was MIT professor David Mellis’s DIY cell phone, which began as a series of open-source instructions for a basic cell-phone design using only $200 in parts. Mellis made the project into a kit, which got Tibbits and his team thinking: “What are the components of this, and how can we make it assemble itself?”

Fast-forward a couple years from when Mellis’s phone was released, and Tibbits and his lab have a rough prototype for the self-assembled cell phone. It’s composed of six parts that assemble into two different phones. The parts are put into a tumbler (think of something like a cement mixer) and tossed around until the parts click together into the phones. Depending on the speed of the tumbler, it can take under a minute. Here’s a video showing it in action: