UC Berkeley

This paper seeks to explore the process of elastic bending in furniture design and presents a case study that demonstrates the creative and structural potential of bending-active structures as possible improvement to the current state of the art. This case study brings together design procedures, borrowed from declarative design in software engineering, architectural design, and material science in order to envision new applications for bending-active structures. It investigates how bending can be used strategically for the design of furniture scale objects and, particularly, an office chaise lounge for one person. Active-bending implementation is the key for creating structures that achieve new milestones beyond the perceived limits of material and process. Moreover, the project stands as a great opportunity for the development of a pipeline for fabrication that automates the translation of a given high-level description of a design, to the production of the data required for fabrication via a particular material system.