Three Points on Design by Scott Klinker

While this site offers a lot of technical advice about MassC, I’d like to suggest some design criteria to think about. Any good design these days must suggest a coherent story. The best way to assure this is to have the design’s context, form and technique supporting each other and moving in the same direction.

Context: Lifestyle and Typology
There are millions, yes millions, of chair and table designs in the world, so get very specific about why yours is innovative. Place it into a specific lifestyle attitude or interior design trend (Bohemian Modern? Live/Work needs? Flexible Use?) Also get specific about it’s type as per the needs of interior design specifiers. While ‘dining chair’ may sound like a solid type, there are actually many sub-types: armless, armchair, high-back, low-back, upholstered, non-upholstered, etc., each with it’s own set of problems. Have a look at www.architonic.com to explore the product category, so that you can find a strategic space to innovate.

Form: Composition and Beauty
Proportion is one of the most important elements of furniture design. While there are some classic rules and proportioning systems, like the ‘golden section’, real refinement comes from iteration and looking critically at the composition. Refined form always takes time. Make physical models to check your designs. The computer is an amazing tool for visualization, but often lies about proportion. As you study furniture structure, you will recognize many recurring structural needs within a chair design. Resolving the structure (engineering) with a pleasing composition (design) is the true ‘art’ of making furniture.

Technique: Inventive Use of Materials and Processes
An obvious opportunity with Digital Fabrication is to explore forms that were not possible before. What about your design pushes the techniques to deliver a form language that we haven’t seen before? Could your design be made without digital fabrication? Are you pushing the materials to perform in a unique way?

For the Truss chairs here my goals were simple – to translate the most archetypal wooden chair into an honest digi-fab language. The double-sided laminate and raw, cut edge gave it a very graphic look. The final composition tries to blend the language of digital with a rustic archetype. The final pieces are rugged enough for a contract market, but priced for a residential market. We worked hard to conceal all hardware and make it easy to assemble. My design is an early 'baby step' into digi-fab. I assume you all will advance the discussion with greater sophistication!

Truss Chairs by Scott Klinker