Combining 3D-Printing and 3D-Scanning to create custom furniture out of concrete.
TEAM
Hendrik Lindemann & Stefan Neudecker (Mentor), Anna Chirkina, Josephine Zienow & Wenqian Ni (Co-Designer)
MY ROLE
Designer
The goal of innovation is always to inspire change. As humans, adapting to a new world means releasing old identities, shedding the past, and joining the future. We tried to embrace this notion of innovation through the project Concrete Design: we created a concrete furniture piece that would incorporate different body positions from different people, fusing them together. As a result, our concept 'Alter Ego' explored the concept of identity through 3D printing, scanning, and moulding. For this we created a fully functional production pipeline from scanning the body positions to people to create full own custom 3D printed furniture
No items found.
Keywords:
✹
Concrete, 3D-Printing, Functional Innovation, Furniture Design, Production Pipeline
Challenge:
✹
Combining 3D-Printing and 3D-Scanning to create custom furniture out of concrete.
Team:
✹
Hendrik Lindemann & Stefan Neudecker (Mentor), Anna Chirkina, Josephine Zienow & Wenqian Ni (Co-Designer)
My Role:
✹
Designer
Duration:
✹
4 months
Synopsis
The goal of innovation is always to inspire change. As humans, adapting to a new world means releasing old identities, shedding the past, and joining the future. We tried to embrace this notion of innovation through the project Concrete Design: we created a concrete furniture piece that would incorporate different body positions from different people, fusing them together. As a result, our concept 'Alter Ego' explored the concept of identity through 3D printing, scanning, and moulding. For this we created a fully functional production pipeline from scanning the body positions to people to create full own custom 3D printed furniture
The most logical way to approach a design problem is to work backward, as it were: starting from the only ‘known’ in the equation, the desired value, and then adopting or developing a frame that is new to the problem sitation. The desired value in the case of our project was to be found somewhere between people and technology.
Additoanlly we were assigned keywords to further define our project direction: "cold" and "individualistic." These two characterestics were both projected onto the aspect of technology, which shaped the decision to focus on 3D Printing Concrete, as well as the aspect of people, which was to be explored in the next step.
Building Blocks (Exploration)
The surface, however, should be in strong contrast with the rest of the body
Translating attributes like ‘cold’ and individualistic’ to people and technologies can quickly lead to negative associations, if not distopian. Even though this posed a viable concept route, we instead chose to focus on morphing these terms into design principles that were a little more open in their interpretation as well as being more neutral in their personality.
❄ Design Principle - Cold
To cold-shoulder someone refers to the act of ignoring someone. We preferred this idea as a design principle and the inherent nature of what we wanted to design over having it be cold by being lifeless. This way we were aiming to project a ‘cold’ attitude of our product outwards, while inward we had space to work with the term ‘individualistic’ and making it more 'warm' to form contrast.
🌀 Design Principle - Individualistic
Individualism is marked by adapting to new roles and identies. With this aspect in mind, the personality of our piece of furniture inwards was one that was in constant change and combining different personas at once.
02
Research
Finding the Alter Ego (Ideation)
With the design principles and framing in place we were able to start our ideation. Focusing both on sketching and clay modelling our creative efforts were focused around combining the design principles and production process in a meaningful way. Our core concept we developed was following these goals:
✹ Concrete is a suitable base material for outdoor furniture due to its durability and weather resistance.
✹ To reinforce its "cold-shoulder" character, we chose straight-cut side surfaces to clearly isolate the furniture from its surroundings.
✹ As opposed to the rest of the body, the surface featured sweeping curves instead of meticulously straight angles - unifying several 3D-scanned body positions we had previously collected. As a result, the user assumes an alter ego when searching for a seat.
“A piece of outdoor furniture that stands isolated from it’s surroundings yet unifies and abstracts several scanned body postures simultaneously in itself.”
Core Concept
Sketches i made to explore the character and finding a form language
03
Analysis
Compiling Bodies (Prototyping)
Since the 3D printing of the furniture would take place at the Technische Universität Braunschweig we created a product pipeline to ensure no major technical hiccups during the production. The 4 step program was devided into two phases: Decentralized Proccessing (Step 1-3) and Localized Production (Step 4 + Handoff).
04
Analysis
Getting Concrete (Production)
After the production pipeline was finished we went on to create out furniture: In collaboration with the Technische University Braunschweig we set out to 3D print and finish our furniture in the span of 3 days work. This left very little room for experimentation. We were depending on our pipeline, hoping it was easy enough to adjust to local differences etc. Our script divided the volume of our model into layers while print paths are created on them. This is so the volume can be printed without interruption. With our already finished digital models and user data we arrived in Braunschweig and set out to work.
Luckily most of the production went off without a hitch. The process turned out to be less autonomous than we thought since the correct mixing of the concrete greatly affected the quality of our print. Covering the surface of our clay model with industrail wax helped to correct any errors that would be due to a uneven concrete density.
From left to right: (1) The clay model in its finshed state, (2) Scanning our body a last time pre-production, (3) the 3d-printed surface before the rest of the body was applied with gunite
Our Alter Ego (Presentation)
After building a mold around the 3D-printed surface, we filled it with spray on cement in order to complete the body. This way the side surfaces were flat like we intended them to be. With this last step complete and after letting the model dry we were able to share our work. Since the project turned out a success our university decided to use it for its outdoor area where it still can be found to this day.
The size of 120 cm width and 41 cm height makes the body comfortably sized to hold up to 2 persons without problems. Due to its rectangular nature, multiple 'Alter Egos' can be placed next to each other, creating a field of varying heights and depths, with more space for more people. The total production cycle took about 3 hours to complete, but this can be cut shorter in the future - so while it isn't quiet suited for mass production just yet, refining the production pipeline could make this possible in the future.
.png)
.jpg)
.png)
.jpg)
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.png)
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
