Portfollio

Re-engineering the iconic Prism Chair with Fred Baier

 

In the late 80's Fred Baier, successful furniture designer, was exploring how the early computers could be used to aid the design process for creatives. His iconic prism chair became one of the first products to be manufactured from a computer generated design. Fred helped advance the early design software packages into a practical tool for the designer.

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Fast foward to 2015 and powerful CAD packages are the norm to design everything. Fred wanted to manufacture a small run of his Prism Chairs but as computer programmes have changed so much, his early files are unrecognisable by modern technology.

 

Fred came to me with a brief to re-engineer from his original drawings and a sample, his very own design and manufacture it from stainless steel.  I created the 3D model using SolidWorks sheet metal functionality. This allowed me to flatten patterns of the individual components  to allow me to punch the shapes out of steel. I then used the model to create drawings of how the parts needed to be bent to create the desired 3 dimentional shapes.

 

Fred went on to cover the chairs in a printed film taken from photos he had taken of a lily pond. The chairs went to be displayed in the Victoria And Albert Museum in London.

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