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M+, Hong Kong, © Front Design. Courtesy the artist and Friedman Benda.
Materialised Sketch of a Chandelier 立體草繪吊燈
2005
The playful loops and zig-zags of this chandelier belie the advanced computing and fabrication techniques that underpin its design. Using a motion-capture system of cameras and ‘pens’ developed by Japanese technology company Crescent, the design group Front—established in Stockholm in 2003 by Sofia Lagerkvist, Charlotte von der Lancken, Anna Lindgren, and Katja Pettersson—sketched a series of furniture forms in space, creating three-dimensional maps of data points. Modelling software gave these paths a roughly elliptical cross-section, rendering the ‘drawings’ as tangles of tube-like forms that merged together to create recognisable objects. These digital designs were then produced via selective laser sintering, a 3D-printing technique that uses a computer-directed beam of ultraviolet light to solidify the forms out of a bath of liquid polymer. The resulting series of furniture (including chairs, tables, and lighting) were finished with glossy white lacquer.
Prototyped in 2005 and demonstrated publicly for the first time at the 2006 Tokyo Design Week, the Sketch series pushed the boundaries of developing digital fabrication and design techniques, uniting these advanced technologies with the implied directness and immediacy of drawing. While the futuristic promises of digital fabrication rest on the speculation that objects might someday be produced automatically—without human labour or intervention—the Sketch series reveals the considerable amount of work necessary to manipulate digital files and refine the material qualities of a finished object.
Prototyped in 2005 and demonstrated publicly for the first time at the 2006 Tokyo Design Week, the Sketch series pushed the boundaries of developing digital fabrication and design techniques, uniting these advanced technologies with the implied directness and immediacy of drawing. While the futuristic promises of digital fabrication rest on the speculation that objects might someday be produced automatically—without human labour or intervention—the Sketch series reveals the considerable amount of work necessary to manipulate digital files and refine the material qualities of a finished object.
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