Endless, one plastic string, made of old
refrigerators, crafted by a robot, into chair.
When the first plastic chairs were made, they
began with fairly simple tools and moulds to form
the plastic. The simple tools were easy to adjust
and this gave the designer the chance to evaluate
the final product and adjust the tools almost
endlessly.
As labour grew more and more expensive, it was
filtered out of the process with automated and
complicated tools.
These automated processes have been very
inflexible until now. High investments in
complicated moulds made it almost impossible for
a designer to evaluate and refine his final object.
The designer is no longer involved in the
productionprocess and the design stage is
completely shifted to a pre production phase.
As Dirk van der Kooij considered this a lost chance
he made a pact with the devil, because he found a
solution, not in labour but in computerization.
By combining different techniques, he was able to
design an automated but very flexible process. He
tought a robot his new craft, drawing furniture out
of one endlessly long plastic string.
This opened the possibility for Dirk van der Kooij to
design in the good old fashioned way, making a
chair, evaluating, refining, making a chair,
evaluating, refining, making a chair. Or developing
an infinitely large collection of variations.
Endlessly.
Endless chair by Dirk van der Kooij
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- Elena Sommariva
- 22 November 2010