B-Shelves

B-Shelves (Box-Shelves) explores the relationship between architectural design intent, generative design, mass customization and digital fabrication. B-Shelves is mass custom furniture that is customizable on-line. It looks at generative design as an enabler for different design and manufacturing processes and different designer/consumer relationships. A process of mass customization, as described by the work, is able to support consumers who are interested in personalizing their furniture piece through a guided process. Through this process, the traditional role of the architect is shifted. The architect must consider the design of multiple end products and focus on a framework that is able to generate the serendipitous as well as the imagined. The B-Shelves project explores three parts of this mass custom process: how form is generated (including codifying the architect s knowledge base in a parametric framework), how form is customized (using an interactive web interface), and how numerous unique forms are fabricated (using efficiencies of mass production). Each part of the file-to-factory process is discussed in depth, as is the construction of a built prototype.