Nada Debs & TRAME's Interplay Backgammon Board Reimagines Marquetry

Marquetry has been a craft of fixed patterns, repeated by hand and passed down largely unchanged. With 'Interplay', Lebanese designer Nada Debs is placing that process in a new context, in collaboration with TRAME Creative Studio. Released as a backgammon board, the project hands part of the design over to an algorithm, while the handwork stays exactly where it's always been.

The board was developed with marquetry artisan Nabil Haswani, who has practised the craft for over five decades, and creative coder Anna Lucia, who built the algorithm behind it. Rather than programming the system to reproduce existing patterns, the team studied how marquetry actually works, from how pieces fit together to the material limits that shape every design. Once the algorithm learned those rules, it began generating its own layouts, each one different, but each one still built inside the boundaries the craft has always worked within.

"I've always believed that technology should serve craft, not replace it," Debs shares. "Interplay is the result of a conversation between different disciplines, where ancient craft techniques informed the algorithm, and the algorithm, in turn, opened new creative possibilities for the craft."

The project continues a line of work Debs has developed for years, centred on how a craft can change form without losing what makes it a craft. Here, the algorithm doesn't take Haswani's place. It changes what he starts with. Every board is still cut, fitted and finished by hand, following a process that hasn't changed even as the patterns behind it have.

An accompanying online platform extends that idea further, letting anyone generate their own version of the design, separate from the physical board itself.