LO – Computational Fabrication

One piece of generative design that has been digitally fabricated is Brazilian architect Guto Requena’s Samba stool. It is a piece of furniture that was created based off traditional Brazilian music. The architects extracted parameters from the songs, such as the bass and treble. From that data they received frequencies that generated the curves, which grew in “real-time following the music.” The data was input into a motorized machine that is controlled by a computer, which sculpted the digital file from a cube of marble. I admire that the architects took music, which to me is a field that seemed disparate from computing, and was able to use innovations from computing to celebrate and share. The stools themselves are also beautiful! While the architect’s design sensibilities weren’t necessarily extremely prevalent, the material choice as well as the concept itself were reflective of Requena’s design personality and background.