This summer, the furniture company Kartell will start selling chairs designed in a collaboration between the famed French designer Philippe Starck and an algorithm.
Generative design describes a process in which a designer defines technical constraints, like weight, strength, and stipulations for manufacturing, through a computer program; then an algorithm comes up with designs that fit all of the designers’ specifications. The software company Autodesk has been working on generative design for years, and when Starck approached the company with the idea of doing a project, the group decided to use Autodesk’s experimental generative design software platform to create a chair using as little material as possible. That meant inputting Starck’s creative vision and the technical constraints of the injection molding process to Autodesk’s software, which dreamed up hundreds of different chairs before Starck settled on one design–soon to be mass-manufactured this year.
The final design, which looks almost organic, with small tendrils acting as supports in unexpected places, is called “A.I.,” named so because the chair is a collaboration between a human and machine.
Over the past few years, Autodesk has worked with technical experts on generative design projects, but A.I. is unique to those conceptual proposals. None of Autodesk’s previous generative projects–like creating a space lander for NASA, car parts for GM, and a proof-of-concept super-light airplane cabin seat–have made it to market. Instead, they act as experiments to show off the company’s technology and help it design for more futuristic scenarios, unlike A.I., which is being produced within just a few months. Likewise, one of Starck’s concerns–that, ultimately, the chair was beautiful–doesn’t usually come up in more engineering-focused applications for generative design. “Those are very different requirements versus the performance-driven engineering requirements that we’re used to talking about, whether it’s high-performance motor sports or aerospace,” says Mark Davis, senior director of design futures at Autodesk.