OnSite Studio 2002-2010
The lecture will be the occasion to present and discuss the evolution of the OnSite_00 project through the years. Started in the year 2002 as a proposal for customizable urban furniture for the city of Brussels, the OnSite_00 project or “programmatic urban furniture prototype” is a system based design project, using both CAD/CAM technologies, and a flexible (standardized) construction material, to design and produce variable objects out of the particular dialogue between the “system” and its final use or context (input). After working out this project for a couple of years now, it seems to be interesting to compare the conceptual and theoretical issues from its origin with the facts and realities of its own itinerary. Next to technical aspects of the project I would like to discuss the “economic realities” related to the use of IT technologies at the particular scale of the furniture industry. After transforming the way to design and produce our products, digital tools have also given the designer the ability to rethink its economical autonomy. We (digital crafts designer) are not anymore related to the major production companies, we can indeed find within the IT world all tools needed to develop, produce, communicate ad sell our products on an autonomous basis. This is somehow what happened to the music industry a couple of years ago. This might also be the only and real evolution: taking over the mass production industry model to a more humanized and personalized scale. Last part of the lecture will be the presentation of the winning competition for the design of public outdoor furniture for the city of The Hague in the Netherlands, project that will be worked out with the collaboration of ETHZ.

http://wiki.caad.arch.ethz.ch/Education/GuestLectures