For years, French designer Patrick Jouin has leveraged the geometric freedom of additive manufacturing in his creations, bringing to life many boundary-pushing furnishings items, together with a single-piece 3D printed bench with inner ribs and struts, which was displayed on the Palais de Tokyo museum in Paris. This month, the designer has unveiled his newest 3D printed design, Ta.Tamu, a chair that can also be produced from a single piece and foldable.
The chair, which is the fruits of a number of years of labor (following the unique Tamu chair), incorporates an natural bio-inspired construction, drawing on parts like bones and joints to create a single-piece construction that may fold onto itself and assist weight. The result’s a chair that may be 3D printed flat utilizing polymer powder sintering after which unfolded utilizing a sequence of 33 joints—all with out the necessity for any connections or meeting.
Central to Jouin’s creation of the 3D printed chair was Dassault Systèmes‘ generative design platform 3DEXPERIENCE, which enabled the designer to leverage AI-powered digital twins to create the distinctive construction. In accordance to the designer: “The method is grounded in a steady dialogue between the designer’s instinct and the intelligence of digital instruments. Every iteration led to refinements, print assessments and bodily validations…Impressed by the structural logic of bone, the shape is light-weight but robust—as within the human physique, the place materials is current solely the place it’s wanted. This can be a generated kind, however by no means an automatic one—the result of a affected person dialogue between creation and computation.”
The chair itself can assist as much as 100 kilograms (220 kilos) and weighs simply 3.9 kg (8.6 lbs)—which is 75% lighter than the chair’s design would weigh at full density. Protecting the burden down was essential to Jouin, whose design ethos can also be primarily based on sustainability and materials effectivity. In different phrases, the designer got down to make a chair that used as little materials as attainable, whereas nonetheless sustaining optimum operate. “We’re in an period the place we produce greater than we want,” Jouin stated. “With the assistance of recent collaborative applied sciences, we are actually capable of create extra effectively, producing much less waste, proper from the design course of.”
Finally, the Ta.Tamu chair is a proof of idea for a co-creation course of that mixes the abilities and intent of the human designer with the ability of generative design, each working collectively to provide you with new design ideas and methods to boost materials financial system. Notably, the software program was not solely important for modeling the topologically optimized chair, it was additionally used for simulating the construction’s habits to make sure it could possibly be unfolded and assist the required weight earlier than going to printing, additional including to the mission’s materials effectivity.
“To enhance the world we reside in, we’ve to alter the best way we produce, design and use supplies,” added Anne Asensio, Vice President Design Expertise, Dassault Systèmes. “Ta.Tamu represents a name to motion for trade to embrace a generative financial system as a substitute of constant to create with out limits. Ta.Tamu was created with the expertise used to innovate sustainably in industrial contexts.”
