Year
2014
Project Background
After completing college I started working on my own venture, called O-LAP, with one of my classmates.This project was initiated as a part of my efforts in building my start-up. The start-up is built on the concepts of computational furniture design and digital fabrication.
Project Description
I started with developing furniture designs which could be manufactured using CNC router machines. I came across the idea and technology while making physical models of my architectural designs in college and across the internet. We developed a few static designs and built our start-up venture on it. Realizing the fast design and production process, and a template file which was computationally comprehensible I sought to play with the geometry of the design in a way it proved utilitarian in use.
Design Objective
I developed 2 algorithms, which enhanced 2 of the existing designs in O-LAP to form a computationally generated design for the same, but responded to changes in the final design, size and proportions based on user inputs. The parameters which influenced the design was chosen to be something which any person would know. It had to be something as simple as knowing one’s age. The algorithm established the relation between how the parameters influenced the geometry of the design and provided a visualization, fabrication drawing and approximate material usage figures.
Design
Darwin
The first algorithm started from one of our designs named Darwin. Darwin was a rocking chair designed by my partner at O-LAP. Detailed information about Darwin is available on this page. I understood it’s geometry and tried to make it customisable reflecting 3 parameters of Age, Weight and Relax. A detailed description of the entire design can be found at this link. I tried to establish a thorough relation between the parameters and geometry in this model, associating the difference in size of the chair with a square root function of the age parameter, which was restricted within a range to ensure the size appropriately reflects the physical size of the body, at the given age. We managed to fabricate the final two extremes of the algorithm outputs.
Demo of the Script
Prototype
Plato
The second algorithm was based on one of our most hotly selling commercial design which we named ‘Plato’, which was designed by me earlier. Detailed information about Plato is available on this page. Re-approaching this design to make it customisable proved a greater challenge due to its organic form. I experimented with slightly different parameters to influence the design, choosing age, height and posture. The algorithm generated a visualization, fabrication data and material usage approximations.
Demo of the Script
Design Portfolio 