Parametric + Digital Furniture Studio

Teaching with Italian Furniture Designer Caterina Tiazzoldi, I initiated the first designbuild furniture studio at Columbia University. The idea was to use exclusively parametric software and digital fabrication equipment to design and build furniture at the GSAPP in search of a radically new concept of furniture. The traditional idea conceiving furniture as a market proposal imposed to the client today is challenged by a more humanized approach to design. The pedagogical research project Parametric Furniture applies the advanced computation tools and fabrication techniques developed within the context at GSAPP at Columbia University to develop adaptable design and a flexible production system. Customers input their preferences and requirements and the system provides them a unique solution. Our class was chosen my the Milan Furniture Fair to be exhibited in the 2009 Solone de Mobile. Brian Brush and Yong Ju Lee’s project SoftShelf is one of 21 Finalists in the Rima Editrice “Young & Design” Competition, the master prize for the “35 and younger” designers.