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The Bone Collector

If nature needed to grow a chair, Joris Laarman thinks he knows how it would look

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By New York Times | December 18, 2017 | Design

If nature needed to grow a chair from the ground up, Joris Laarman thinks he knows how it would look. 

The 38-year-old Dutch designer snatched an algorithm about bone growth and fed it into a computer that digitally printed a ceramic mould for a chair that is now sitting innocently — as though it were no big deal — in “Joris Laarman Lab: Design in the Digital Age” at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

A rendering of the MX3D Bridge in the workshop. The bridge is being executed by robotic 3D printers and will be completed in 2018.

The designer didn’t sculpt its forms to look organic. Generated with nature’s own codes for growth, it is organic. Laarman, actually, was only the midwife.

But the cast-aluminum Bone Chair is a big deal. Remember when Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland back in 1996?

“Gradient Screen,” 2017, an experiment sculptural work produced by MX3D and designed by Joris Laarman.

With a seat and backrest supported by what looks like antlers morphing into chewing gum, the chair is the Dolly of furniture design: a breakthrough generated by new technology, in this case the marriage of biological algorithms and smart software. Skeletal, almost pigeon-toed in its awkwardness, it looks unassuming, but in 2006 its introduction was a design achievement.

The aluminum chair is part of Laarman’s series of Bone Furniture, which includes a long table and an inviting chaise lounge, all with branching legs strengthened where support is needed. 

Joris Laarman Lab’s Bone Chair, composed using an algorithm that mimics the structure of bird bones.

Another series was based on a completely different technological premise: A robot assembled three rococo tables out of tiny cubes, called voxels, that add up to curving shapes, like the dots in a Chuck Close painting but in three dimensions. In a third series, Makerchairs, Laarman riffed on that Danish icon of fluidity, the famous polyurethane Panton chair, and staged a lineup of a dozen knockoffs built from parts stamped out in different patterns, like a 3D puzzle. 

Laarman, a prominent and inventive member of the expanding digital design tribe, is not alone. The show would seem to welcome visitors to a brave new world.

But it not only represents the world of the future; it is announcing the brave new present.

The Maze Makerchair, constructed from CNC-milled walnut and maple that is then hand finished.

“Joris Laarman Lab: Design in the Digital Age” runs through Jan. 15 at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan; 212-849-8400, cooperhewitt.org

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Joseph Giovannini Photography

Joris Laarman Lab

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