If you’re lucky enough to be in Italy for Milan Design Week this year, do yourself a favor and check out the world’s first “chair designed using artificial intelligence to be put into production.” With language that specific you know it must be interesting.
Kartell, Philippe Starck, and Autodesk, a 3-D software company, collaborated on the design, but ultimately the AI presented the final specifications. According to a report from Dezeen, the goal of the AI project was to create a chair as the result of communication between a machine learning system and human designers.
In a video discussing the project, Starck describes the process as being like having a conversation. He says:
Kartell, Autodesk and I asked the artificial intelligence a question: do you know how we can rest our bodies using the least amount of material?
After a bit of back and forth the human and computer mash-up settled on a final design and produced the completed products using a manufacturing process called injection molding.
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The results are quite compelling if you ask us. The funky design has a bit of a 1970’s future-pop look to it. According to the humans responsible for the project, the chairs are within the standards for sturdiness and quality to be sold as furniture.
No word on whether the design will ever be sold in stores, but we hope Autodesk’s ambition and Kartell and Starck’s human creativity inspire the next generation of designers to explore this kind of man-machine hybrid design process further.
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