A chair for every roomPrototype 03

Sample post: the example that ships with the Munari design system. futureshock.ai

There is the chair for the kitchen and the chair for the office, the folding chair, the chair that becomes a bed. Each one began as a rule: legs that reach the floor, a seat at knee height, a back that holds the spine. Change one part and you have another chair.

So I wrote the parts down as code and let the machine choose among them. What came out was not a better chair. It was a set of chairs I would never have drawn, and a clear view of what the rule could not see.

The rule

Six kinds of legs, three seats, six backs, and arms three times in ten. That is all. Every chair below is one draw from those lists:

const legs = pick(['straight', 'splayed', 'sled',
                   'pedestal', 'cantilever', 'rocker']);
const seat = pick(['line', 'slab', 'sling']);
const back = pick(['none', 'straight', 'tall',
                   'slanted', 'ladder', 'round']);
if (back !== 'none' && rnd() < .3) addArms();

Some of these I would sit on. A rocker with a ladder back, a sled with a sling. Most I would not: a cantilever with no back is a diving board.

The interesting ones sit at the edge of the rule, where two parts nearly refuse each other. The rule doesn’t know that a pedestal and a tall back will tip over, because it doesn’t know about weight. That is the first thing to add.

Where we are

1. Problem

   What is actually being asked.

2. Definition

   Draw the edges of the problem.

3. Components

   Break it into smaller problems.

4. Data

   What already exists, and how it was solved.

5. Analysis

   What the data says, and what it hides.

6. Creativity

   Ideas, within the limits the analysis set.

7. Materials, technology

   What there is to make it with.

8. Experiments

   Try the materials; find out what they do.

9. · we are here

   Models

   Sketches and prototypes, to scale.

10. Verification

    Put the models in front of people.

11. Drawings

    Write down how to make it.

12. Solution

    The thing, made.

Models, then. The next step puts three of these in front of people and asks them to sit.