In this project, which took place at the Faculty of Architecture at the TH Köln, the aim was go through the various project phases of furniture design while reflecting upon the interplay of digital-, virtual-, and analogue tools. Each student was tasked with designing their own piece of improbable or unlikely furniture – specifically a small stool or ‘Hocker’ in German – to test different tools and explore their individual, hybrid work steps up to the prototype. Finally, we curated a hybrid exhibition of our design process and the realised results for the Kölner Passagen 2024 (including plans, brochures, films, VR/AR applications, and prototypes).
The project, led by Prof. Dr. Nadine Zinser-Junghanns and Carolin Schabbing, was held at the space+ lab at the architecture faculty which undertakes projects that spans the real-, the virtual-, and the hybrid realm. At space+ lab, communication and cooperation between humans and machines in the design of space and objects are at the centre, and the aim is to research hybrid design methods, critically analyse them, and explore their limits.
The Honeycomb Hocker seen below is designed in virtual space and ‘exported’ into real space. It was made in Gravity Sketch and is hand drawn in three dimensions. The digital model was then printed using a 3D printer.
