With the project Parametric Furniture we are looking for a radically new concept of furniture. The traditional idea conceiving
furniture as a market proposal imposed to the client today is challenged by a more humanized approach to design. The
pedagogical research project Parametric Furniture applies the advanced computation tools and fabrication techniques
developed within the context at GSAPP at Columbia University to develop adaptable design and a flexible production
system. Customers input their preferences and requirements and the system provides them a unique solution.
Customers and designer collaborate in the construction of a new environment.
2009 SALONE INTERNAZIONALE DEL MOBILE
SALONE SATELLITE
22-27 APRIL
STAND C28
UNEXPECTED BOX
Junichiro Horikawa and Eleni Petaloti
What is the essence of compact space? Is it a choice or necessity?
Above all, what still remains is the right to a personal space, the need to belong to a place of one’s own identity.
That gives “room” to life and its activities to unfold. When the essence of space is a choice, each corner lives its own life;
efficiency and economy are means to introduce character and identity. When a necessity, every mm. Is responsible for
offering to the overall, efficiency and economy are means to an end. The unexpected box is a tool. A tool for one’s compact
world and a world unto itself. It is a desk, but maybe more than that. It is silent, but it is alive. It has life, as much as it
contains. It is compact, but it can generate space. It is design and architecture; solution and obsession.
SOFTSHELF
Brian Brush and Yong Ju Lee
Softshelf is inspired by the idea of creating a bookshelf that deforms the rational cellular grid in order to create a custom
occupiable, differentiated, and soft space for the storage of books and other objects. It is fully customizable by manipulating
five customer controls embedded in a parametric design system: overall size of the shelf, overall geometric effect of the
shrinking and expanding of boxes, the strength of this geometric effect on the entire shelf system, the curvature shape of the
shelf, and the stretched shape of the boxes. Softshelf takes advantage of the rigidity and fluidity of wood combined with the
precision of CNC milling technology to create a monolithic and continuous form, sturdy yet geometrically complex, and
ultimately innovative.
CHABLE
Naser Madouh and Gabriel Nichols
The Chable proposal investigates the idea of the most basic geometry that could transform with minimal change. A full range
between a chair and a table is possible by simply changing a few parameters such as the size of the void, overall height and
length. Material behavior was examined by controlling the response to the human body with the various dimensions of void.
With this concept came multiple functionalities from a unique geometrical and constructive process. Using the power of
geometry, an invention is formulated that morphs a chair to a table and a table to a chair.
PARAMETRIC LACE
Samuel Grenader, Karen Bechara Mitri, Jay Sikes, and Heath West
The Parametric Lace Shelving System is a customizable spatial divider, with customer driven variables such as height, width
transparency, opacity, structural modulation, and lace subdivision detail. An initial pattern combines with the controlled
parameters to inform the fabrication process, made with Plyboo, a lightweight material made from layered sheets of bamboo.
As each customer may program their own lace, the parametric system builds a family of aesthetically related furniture pieces,
while encouraging each customer-designed piece to be unique.
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