Generation By Knoll
I was originally approached by Formway Design Studio to help develop a concept for a chair back in 3D. Formway were looking at using a new material, Hytrel, that has some unique properties. Once moulded, a Hytrel part can then be stretched, which imparts extra elasticity to the area that was stretched. At the beginning of the project I worked with the Formway designers on concepts; capturing their design intent in CAD models. As the project developed, I also had to incorporate the engineering intent.
The design intent was to have horizontal fibres running between thick vertical columns. When stretched, the horizontal fibres will deform to 600%-800% of their original length, before returning to their post-stretched length of approximately 200% of the moulded length. One of the biggest challenges in modelling the chair back ‘skin’ was allowing for some areas to stretch, while unstretched areas had to fit exactly onto the rigid chair back frame. The back skin pattern also had to look right once it was stretched and fitted and welded to the back frame.
Formway partnered with Knoll, who licensed the design and also manufactures the chair. As Formway uses Solidworks and Knoll uses Pro Engineer/Creo for modelling, I was asked by Knoll to help model several of the final chair-back components, that were then used to create the production tools. The final skin is actually several parts, both rigid and flexible, that are welded together before fitting to the back frame.
