While still under construction, the project for Casa Vi, a single-family villa, focused on the refinement of the living area layout and the furnishing with a collection of individual, digitally crafted furniture. Our goal was to provide a serene daily life together with maximum functionality of the living spaces through an appealing, long-lasting design.
The collection, named LAM.a, included an equipped wall with a technical kitchen module, an independent peninsula with integrated fumes extractor, a console, a desk and bookshelf for the studio room.
LAM.a (Laminar automata) is as much a process as a forming system, consisting of our custom software and its physical actualization. Starting from an instruction code we can design, digitally manufacture and build furniture of complex geometry starting from wooden planar elements. The entire design is a complete expression of its digital manufacturing processes which allows to “cold bend” flat parts in 3D to obtain the expected final shape. The design is completely parametric and based on computational procedures. This allows automated calculation of the bending pattern studied starting from the actual material performance while preserving manufacturability and the cleaness of the cut (very important to almost cancel post processing finishing).
LAM.a in an adaptable system based on actual material behaviour, this allows the rapid customization of the furniture components according to different project scenario and the faithfulness of the final product to its digital prototype. In particular, the software we created, in addition to the automated calculation of the global geometry of each piece, it generates the special 3D cutting pattern that allow the bending of the planar sheets. Moreover, it also generates all the vector information necessary for the programming of CNC fabrication machinery directly, without further programming connecting design with production with an “immediate” continuous stream of data.
LAM.a allows to bend planar elements of into space and to assemble them in structurally sound configurations without the need for molds, jigs or exposure to steam typical of traditional wood forming techniques.
As we wanted to auto-produce all furniture components inside our fabrication laboratory in a sustainable manner, LAM.a solves the problem of wood hot forming normally necessary to freeze the material into a specific shape. We simplified the manufacturing increasing the sustainability of the process eliminating the production of molds and disposable templates needed in traditional wood forming processes and not compatible with a one-off production.
Our process allows to innovate the use of a traditional material such as plywood boards while it paves the way to a precise and sustainable construction of novel wooden products with unique and operative design features with a simple manufacturing and assembly strategy based on planar elements.
