Furniture: Objects or Structures?
The majority of people, as well as designers and manufacturers, tend to regard furniture principally as objects and not as structures that carry loads.
Even in the case when purely structural parts exist, i.e. parts that do not contribute to the actual functionality of the object but instead transfer loads, their design is either not separated from that of the functional part or it is dramatically simplified in favor of the manufacturing cost.
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In some sense, this approach is justified since it is not reasonable to undertake a detailed structural analysis for each product we construct, which would probably increase its cost to a non-rational level. Manufacturers prefer to over-dimensionalize the structural parts using their experience or even experiment themselves via a trial and error approach, instead of relying to structural analysis techniques for the design.
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In our opinion, this dominance of manufacturability over the aesthetics derived from the structural design is often the culprit for spending a great part of our lifes living next to products that are not attractive and emotionally indifferent. Separating the purely structural parts of furniture, then trying to elaborate on their shape via Computational Morphogenesis techniques could yield aesthetically interesting designs, having an emotional impact on our everyday life. Living next to objects that we appreciate or admire, thanks to a certain sense of appropriateness that their structural form conveys, may worths the additional cost to undertake. ​
Biomimetic design via
CAE-based Computational MorphoGenesis
Biomimicry stands for the conscious emulation of nature's genius. It has become a topic of increasing interest in a variety of fields (material science, artificial intelligence, etc.), since it permits to simulate the evolutionary rules of nature and use them to solve problems.
In nature, shape and structure are inseparable, since they are fused under the evolutionary processes. In the recent past, several works have been presented around the biological growth rules for natural structures. Analyzing the shape of trees, living shells, bones, etc. with respect to the principal loads they carry during their lifetime, researchers seem to convergence to the following conclusions:
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Natural structures tend to evolve towards an homogeneous stress level at their boundary. This means that the "stress defines the shape", which is the inverse from the standard human design process where "the shape defines the stress".
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For some natural structures, not only their external shape, but also their internal meso-scale structure, adapts according to the stress level that is exercised on it. For bones, this procedure is known as "adaptive bone mineralization".
​Computational MorphoGenesis can be used to ressemble the evolutionary processes described above. ​​​
Aesthetics of biomimetic design
Different aspects concerning the aesthetical part of structurally optimized structures have been exposed through time.
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The majority of structural optimization supporters highlight the intrinsic value of visualizing the flow of forces. Contrary to the extreme homogeneity that dominates contemporary architecture, the exposure of the stress trajectory instantly attracts the human interest. Since we are biased towards regularity and uniformity, "natural design" (i.e. designs that mimic evolutionary processes in nature) seems unnatural.
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Moreover, biomimetic design is usually identified under organic structures with smooth curved features and sophisticated networks. This is not an exception to the previously presented rules. Nature works under simple rules, but in complicated ways. Indeed, when several loadcases are taken into consideration in topology optimization problems, optimized structures quite often dispose an organic shape. Although such a shape is difficult to interprete even for experienced engineers, it emits a sense of awe to its spectators. A first explanation for this feeling can be the admiration for suceeding to decode nature. A second one, is that we admire nature for what it has suceeded without using consciousness.
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Finally, we shall not neglect the implicit message on the preservation of natural ressources conveyed by lightweight optimized structures.