Parametric Seating – Bone Rocker Chair

The Bone Rocker Chair was designed by Joris Laarman by merging 3-D modeling and life sciences. Laarman used algorithms to model the proportions of naturally occurring growth such as in human bones and trees.  This algorithm is used by the German car industry and helped Laarman in reducing and strengthening his designs by optimizing the allocation of material, weight and stability.  It also helped in minimizing material input. “In his own words, Laarman sculpts ‘using mother nature’s underlying codes.'”

Design drivers(??)   I am not sure how to use Grasshopper to manipulate the size of the chair.  This model does not have grasshopper in it. I would select the thickness of the legs, the length of the base rocking legs, the length of the seat, and the width of the backrest as my design drivers.

Process:

I started with the base rocker, then the armrests, and seat. I used lofting to connect the pieces and would play with the loft tool so the piece would loft along the curve I wanted it to follow.  Extruding didn’t really work in my favor. It would only extrude the curves and the surface would be hollow. I used the gumball tool a lot to manipulate where I wanted the curves to be.  Working with all four windows worked best for me so I knew where my curves and lines were on the chair.

When I started doing the legs, I found it best to mirror the objects so I wouldn’t have to rebuild everything and worry about everything matching up correctly, which I realized that the beginning portion of my model therefore may not have been accurate i.e. the base rocker. (Maybe one side bigger than the other.  I decided to use the mirror tool a lot then to try to make the model as accurate as possible. By the time I reached the front rocker legs (connecting the front of the armrest and the base rocker), my gumball tool starting having trouble. It would lock onto certain distances and wouldn’t be as flexible. I don’t know if this is a setting issue (maybe I hit a button) or if the file was getting too big/complex with all of the curves and lofting I did with this chair.