AbstractIn the late 1990s servo emerged as a young design collaborative embracing new forms of distributed practice as enabled by the advent of telecommunications technologies. In this section, David Erdman, Marcelyn Gow, Ulrika Karlsson and Chris Perry write about how these organisational principles are at work not only in the context of their practice, but in the design work itself, which stretches across a variety of design disciplines to incorporate areas of expertise particular to information and interaction design, as well as a number of manufacturing and fabrication technologies. Many of servo's projects have focused on small‐scale interior infrastructures, typically in the form of gallery installations, furniture systems and exhibition designs. This particular scale has allowed the group to focus on the development of full‐scale prototypes, exploring a wide range of potential innovations at the point of integration between various technological and material systems. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.