Cromática Bench: New Parametric Furniture Concept!

In my last post, I made a definition for a space divider. After making that post, I continued to generate concepts for a parametric piece of furniture. The next day, I began to design the Cromática Bench, a multicoloured seat for 2, which I found a lot more exciting than the space divider. 

My Inspiration: Carlos Cruz-Diez

My bench design was inspired by the works of the French-Venezuelan visual artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923-2019). Cruz-Diez is a major protagonist in the field of Kinetic and Optical Art, a movement that encourages “an awareness of the instability of reality."  In a lot of his 2D work, he explores the perception of color by juxtaposing coloured lines at various angles. Although Cruz-Diez uses solid colours, the angles of the lines create the illusion of a linear gradient. 

A reason I took interest in Cruz-Diez's work for this project is that the simple, repeating forms seem to lend themselves well to parametric furniture design.

Since the 1960s, Cruz-Diez has created thousands of paintings, sculptures, murals, building facades, and installations. He has permanent public works all over Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. He is considered "one of the most important color theorists of the 20th century and one of the most prominent figures of contemporary art."

I included a few of Cruz-Diez's works below:

Carlos Cruz-Diez. Colour Additive Denise A. 2007. Chromography on aluminum, 180 x 80 cm. 

Carlos Cruz-Diez. Fisicromía para Madrid. 1991. 2x40m.

One of Cruz-Diez's most iconic works is his Couleur Additive mural at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, Venezuela. This mural became a symbol of the migration and exodus of Venezuelans as a result of the country's economic, political, and humanitarian crisis.

Since 2001, Cruz Diez's mural has become the parting place for approximately 6 million Venezuelans—my entire family and I included.

Carlos Cruz-Diez. Couleur Additive. 1974.

The mural is 31484 sq. feet (2925 m2)

"Although my mural was the place of departure for many Venezuelans, I am convinced it will soon become the place of their return," Cruz-Díez said during an interview.

Unfortunately, the mural has been vandalized over the years. Some Venezuelans have been stealing mosaic tiles from the mural before departing the airport. Apparently the tiles function as tokens of their last memory of Venezuela.

Vandalized Couleur Additive mural

I find Cruz-Diez's work inspiring because it is not only inventive and aesthetically captivating, but it also has become part of the collective Venezuelan culture and experience. 

Cruz-Diez's artwork has the power to make Venezuelans simultaneously feel nostalgia, cultural pride, heartbreak, and hope. 

My Other Inspiration: Bauhaus

LEFT: Chair by Marcel Breur & Gunta Stolzl. RIGHT: Puzzle bench by Gabriela Fuente. 

 

I find that the Cruz-Diez style of artwork is compatible with Bauhaus and European avant-garde furniture design. The saturated colours, geometric lines, and simple forms are present in both the artwork and furniture. So when I began designing my bench, I looked to the Bauhaus for inspiration. 

Some of the Bauhaus principles from the 1919 manifesto that stood out to me are:

• Gesamtkunstwerk or the ‘complete work of art’.  The Bauhaus strives to reunite arts and crafts – sculpture, painting, applied art, and handicrafts – as the permanent elements of a new architecture. Gesamtkunstwerk means a synthesis of multiple art forms such as fine and decorative arts.

• Minimalism. Bauhaus artists favoured linear and geometrical forms, avoiding floral or curvilinear shapes.

• Emphasis on technology. Bauhaus workshops were used for developing prototypes of products for mass production. The artists embraced the new possibilities of modern technologies.

• True materials. Materials should reflect the true nature of objects and buildings. Bauhaus architects and designers did not hide even brutal and rough materials.

I want my final design to reflect these principles. I especially resonated with the idea that design and art can be combined. 

Page from my sketchbook

What sets my design apart? 

Although my bench is inspired by Cruz-Diez and Bauhaus designs, it has a unique surface pattern, colour pallete, and fabrication approach.  I am interested in exploring the parametric possibilities within these two styles.  

Materials

I considered using acrylic sheets because they laser cut well and come in the standard colours I need: orange, green, and blue. For the illusion to work best, the colours have to be the closest to the RGB hex colours of orange (225,165,000), green (000,225,000), and blue (000,000,225).

The only setback with acrylic is that it's not very accessible in Calgary. I checked the websites of various local stores and they caried limited colour selections. Bryan introduced me to a nice online shop called Inventables and they carried a wide colour selection with various levels of translucency. The prices weren't too bad but the international shipping on top of the 5 sheets (3 colours + black and white) came around $150 just for the scale model. I also needed to buy glue and wood on top of that.

Carlos Cruz-Diez. 1975/2017. Concordia Plaza, Paris. 

If my scale model turns out promising, I will try to make another version with acrylic sheets. I could try an opaque or translucent version.  If I use translucent acrylics, it may begin to look like Cruz Diez's plexiglass works.

Acrylic would be a great material because it would eliminate the need to paint the bench with different colours. Plus, it would be more in-line with the "true to materials" principles of the Bauhaus manifesto.

Bryan introduced me to another great material for this type of project : coloured MDF (Medium Density Fibre) boards. 

Coloured MDF (aka Valchromat) is a highly-refined, colored-throughout wood fiber panel providing a new and exciting material for store fixture, architectural woodwork, and cabinet applications. Coloured MDF can be routed (without subsequent sanding) to reveal an edge similar to the surface. 

These boards come in dozens of colours, many of which match the colours in my design.

Routed samples of Valchromat

Similar to the acrylic, it needs to be purchased online because its not sold locally. 

So for now, I'll just use plywood or anything that's available in the lab to create my first sample. Before I make my final sample for this class, I will conduct a few tests on the laser cutter to make sure that the pieces of my bench seat pattern fit together.

Once the sample is printed properly, I will spray paint my pieces with the desired colours and glue them together.

Scale

The scale of my bench is based on standard bench dimensions. The full-scale bench will go near the front door of my house, in the inside. The wall it will go up against is roughly 60in wide, so I will make the bench about 42in so that it looks appropriate in the space. 

Instead of being 40 inches, my scale prototype will be about 40 centimeters.

Designing the bench in Rhino 

Chromatic seat pattern with black diagonal slats

The same chromatic seat pattern but with white diagonal slats

The first thing I designed in Rhino was the coloured pattern I wanted on the seat. I still can't decide which I like more: the pattern with the black slats or the pattern with the white slats. 

After I completed the seat pattern, I began to design the legs and the rest of the bench. To create a more harmonious design, I made the bench legs by extending the diagonal slats and bending them down at 90°. I intend to make the bench structure an extension of the artwork on the seat.

I really like the look of slanted legs although I am not sure if this would be sturdy enough with wood. It would definitely work if it was metal or plastic. The nice thing about the slanted legs is that they match the slanted design on the seat. Just in case, I also made a version with straight legs perpendicular to the seat.

Once I had a draft of my concept, I was ready to turn it into a parametric design in Grasshopper.

Reconstructing the Seat Pattern in Grasshopper

The rectangular base and the slat array weren't aligned

I ended up making two definitions for the seat pattern because the first one ended up being a bit overcomplicated. Last class, Bryan showed me a simpler approach for this definition.

In my first definition, I tried making the seat pattern using extruded forms.  

I began by making a vertical slat array for the seat area (those slats were meant to be the coloured strips) and each piece was 2cm wide. The slats lay on top of a solid rectangular base. When I adjusted the sliders for the dimensions of the base, the slat array adjusted to cover the length and width of the base. Since the slats had a fixed width at 2cm (0.787in), they didn't align perfectly with the base length in the x-direction. I was stuck because I didn't know how to make a slider for the base length increase by 0.787in increments at a time.

I ended up figuring out the solution, which was to write a custom expression in the slider edit panel. I had to write '0.787x' in the expression field to make the rectangular base increase in intervals of 0.787in. After figuring this out, I realized that I had new challenges. 

I wasn't sure how to incorporate the diagonal slats like I had in Rhino. For the colour illusion to work, the midpoint of the bottom edge of the diagonal slat needs to be between the blue and green slats and the midpoint of the top edge of the diagonal slat needs to be between the orange and blue slats. It sounds really complicated (it's not) but it's just hard to describe in words! 

Last class, Bryan suggested that instead of creating the pattern with extruded forms, I complete the pattern in 2D and extrude it after. This process is also way more convenient because I need a 2D pattern for the laser cutter.  So, I began to work with a second, improved definition.

The second definition also started with a linear array of rectangular slats. But instead of extruding them, I deconstructed them using explode and list item objects (Bryan showed me this). Deconstructing these rectangles allow me to use their points to fix the new diagonal slats to their correct position. So if I were to modify the dimensions of the vertical slats, the diagonal ones would adjust accordingly while keeping their position.

Once all the slats were in place, I tried to use Region Difference to eliminate the overlapping sections. I wanted the diagonal slats to cut and eliminate the edges of the vertical slats. However, nothing was happening when I used the Region Difference object.

After trying many of Google's suggested solutions and having no success, I tried flattening the 'B' input (curves to subtract) of the Region Difference object. It worked and I felt silly for not trying to flatten it earlier.

I used Region Difference and Region Intersection to turn the coloured slats into a puzzle piece of sorts. No surface overlaps and all the pieces fit together.

Once the definition was complete, I tidied it up and organized it by sections. Organizing and colour coding the definition is strangely one of my favourite parts.

I baked the all the final curves into Rhino. Each colour was in its own layer. 

Then I made a new red layer with all the curves for the laser cutter. 

I duplicated my definition file and created a new version with 3D extrusions using the 2D pattern. In the image to the left, I hid the white diagonal slat extrusions to see the coloured extrusions. As you can see, they all fit together like puzzle pieces.

I animated the extruded pattern to display some of the key parameters. Instead of using remap numbers to animate all the parameters simultaneously, I animated each parameter individually. Animating the sliders one-by-one makes it easier for us to distinguish them from one another.

The chromatic pattern is complete! Yay!

Constructing the Rest of the Bench in Grasshopper

I added a white board underneath the pattern. When I saw the pattern on the white board, I realized that I needed to modify the pattern because the last blue slat detracted too much attention from the rest of the design.

I first tried to modify it by using a list item to paint the first and last blue vertical slats white. After doing this, however, the new white end pieces were too close to the white diagonal pieces and it disrupted the flow of the pattern.

So instead of making the first blue piece white, I decided to add a new white extrusion at both ends of the pattern. I then had to readjust the origin point of the solid base to make it line up with the new pattern. I made the rectangle use the point from the new white pieces.

There! I think it looks better without the first two white slats touching.

The next step is making the bench legs.

As a guide, I referenced the table demo Bryan made at the beginning of the semester. The table leg portion of the definition helped me make the legs for my bench definition. I went through each object to figure out how each part worked to together.  I figured out that by rearranging the objects, I was able to quickly learn how the entire definition worked. 

This is what the definition looked like after I reorganized it. The original definition was already understandable, but the process of reorganizing it helped the information sink in. If it had already been labelled, then I don't think I would have learned it as well. Going forward, this is how I will try to learn about definitions that were made by others. Plus, I really enjoy the process of colour coding and labelling Grasshopper definitions.

This is what the bench looks like with four identical legs. Although this isn't the design I had originally envisioned, I like it as well. I think it looks clean and more minimalistic. The view from the side is quite nice.  I am still going to try to make the original design I had pictured and see which one I like best. My original design is challenging for me to make because it has legs extending from a portion of the seat pattern. I have to find a way to integrate the seat pattern with the legs in a way that is aesthetically pleasing but structurally sound.

I began to modify this design to make it match my original concept. The first thing I made was the stretcher that goes between two of the bench legs. This forced me to get more accustomed to using the list items object. I had a lot of trial and error at this point because I couldn't figure out how to select different points on different objects within the same list. I also got stuck because I hadn't flattened the correct inputs. But in the end I got it and I feel more comfortable using list items now.

I used the two points I selected to make a 2-point rectangle. I learned how to do this with the table definition I showed earlier. 

I used the fillet object to round the corners of the rectangle before extruding it. However, the extrusion failed and produced this unexpected parallelepiped shape. I tried flattening some inputs and outputs but that didn't fix the problem.

I had wanted to fillet some of the extrusions in my bench to make it easier to distinguish the distinct forms. When there are un-filleted pieces next to each other, they sort of blend and appear as one continuous piece.

Because the fillet was failing on the stretcher piece, I got rid of the fillet. The fillet on the two vertical legs were enough to separate them from the stretcher.

I moved on to make the legs on the other end of the bench. I used list items again to construct the legs starting at the end points of the white diagonal slats from the seat pattern. Once I had the endpoints I needed, they were used to make 2-point rectangle curves for the leg extrusions. 

For this definition, I want the number of legs to be easily modified. I used the split list object (for the first time) to do this.

The next thing I did was place the a copy of the legs on the other side of the bench. Instead of copying the entire leg definition, I used the move object to to make the copy. I think using the move object is a better option because it reduces the amount of objects in the definition.

This is what the full definition looked like at this point. 

As the definition got bigger, the wiring began to look crazy so I used different wire display modes to make the definition look more tidy. I used the faint mode for wires that spanned long distances. For example, I used faint wires when I connected the boundary region/boundary intersection objects (from the 'Colour Region' section) to the extrusion objects (from the '3D Extrusion of Chromatic Seat Pattern' section). So when I'm looking at my definition, I immediately know that the faint wires are connecting objects that are far apart and I will get less confused. 

The other display mode that I used is the hidden mode. I used this mode for wires that are even longer than the ones that have the faint mode. When an object has hidden wires, it adds a wave symbol at its inputs instead of a wire. Then, when you select the object, the wires reappear. For added clarity, I always rename the inputs of the object to keep track of where the wire is supposed to go even when the object is deselected.

Another tool I started to use is the relay that can be activated by double clicking anywhere on a wire. I've mainly been using it to modify the path of a wire but it can also be used to reduce clutter. 

The relay basically acts as a wire tie to join wires coming out from the same input or output. I made this example on the right to show what I mean. As you can see, relays can help prevent cluttered definitions in the long run.   

The relays, wire display modes, and colour coded groups have helped me keep track of the objects in my definition. Every time I've made a new section in my definition (solid wood board, legs, stretcher, etc.), I have had to connect it to many objects from the beginning of the definition (2D & 3D Chromatic Seat Pattern). If my work hadn't been organized, it would've been very difficult for me to create the definition at all.  

(I will soon update this section of my blog with the creation process of my final grasshopper definition. I still need to make dowel holes on the solid board, legs, and stretchers to make the assembling process easier.)

Introducing the Cromática Bench

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When viewing from certain angles, the legs become a perfect extension of the black lines from the seat pattern. It's a perspective-based illusion :D

Here are some renders of people sitting on the bench in a room. The plant, rug, and chandelier were royalty free objs I found on this site.

 

My next blogpost will include images of the physical mini-scale model. Stay tuned :)