Optimized for maximum strength with minimal material. | Courtesy of Jon Lam/Friedman Benda and the artist
Dutch designer Joris Laarman made a chair that looks like bones—with software that General Motors developed to optimize car parts. A digital-organic hybrid, the skeletal seat is cast in marble resin from a 3-D-printed mold, and it's just one of the pieces going on display in October at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Software, 3-D scanners, and CNC mills are the new oil paints and easels for artists, and the exhibit, Out of Hand, is the first to showcase the full range of creative digital modeling and fabrication, featuring more than 120 works from architecture to jewelry. And if Laarman's perch looks painful to sit on? Designer Lucas Maassen and Unfold have your back with a couch that's a little, um, cerebral: Maassen generated the sofa's undulating shape by contemplating "comfort" while wearing a brain-scanning headset. Software allowed his brain waves to control the CNC mill as it carved contours into polyurethane foam. Naturally, it only comes in gray.
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