Generative Design I : Chair I

Generative design is another movement developing alongside biomimicry, and to me is slightly more controversial. It seems in some ways to take the designer out of the equation, but like biomimicry, harnesses the resources of systems much more powerful and complex than a single humans ability to design. This chair was a solution optimized and selected for through a series of parametric generations produced by the Autodesk program dreamcatcher. The only starting parameters where the load bearing capacity and height, the rest was up the the computer, and the designer that picked which iterations would be used to inform the next generation. The result is beautiful and elegant no doubt, but strangely reminiscent of something a master craftsman might have design and worked from unique and natural pieces of raw materials, not simply made to look that way. I cannot fault modern designers for turning to algorithms to solve problems, but this chair seems to be encroaching upon a small market left for traditional craftsmen, who may have learned this skill for their own fathers, who know and appreciate their life bringing materials in ways that a computer program could never understand.