Vicky Zhou – Looking Outwards – 02

“The chAIr Project” is a series of four chairs that were inspired by a generative neural network, and then created and brought to life by designers. The data set utilized by this neural network consisted of hundreds of 20th century chair designs gathered from Pinterest. Based on this data set, the neural network system generated hundreds of chairs simply based on aesthetics, many times resulting in unpractical renditions and/or pieces that did not even resemble furniture.

I found this project really interesting because of the results that ensued due to a focus on simply the aesthetics and physical classic qualities of a chair, rather than the technical qualities, such as maximizing surface area in ratio weight distributed and so on. Because of this focus towards aesthetics, many of the chairs were completely unsuitable for actual use, and served as images for inspiration and unrestricted ideation. It was ironic to see how impractical some of these chairs became, as chairs are commonly viewed as practical, everyday products. What ties this project all together and makes it the most engaging, however, is when the two designers, Phillip Schmitt and Steffen Weiss, chose to bring some of these generated prototypes to real life. Seeing the four designs in real life brings it into our dimension of reality, and allows us to fully engage with a familiar concept repackaged in an unfamiliar form.