We have two Deconstruction posts for you in February since we missed January. This is the first one.
Fusillo is a new seating design by Marco Goffi that aspires to facilitate social interaction and conversation in public spaces. I asked Marco to walk us through the process of creating his new design.
When I was thinking about the seating, the historical reference that I had in mind was the typical seating used in France many years ago: the “fauteuil conversation.” In reality, my intention was to create an item with many seats offering the possibility to make relationship. The sign that will suggest me the way to follow was the curve line, an organic concept growing in accordance with my typical language: “flexuous” and fluid inspiration. Geometrical starting point is the three-pointed arrow and its”roto-section,” the peculiar arrangement of the section that combined two different movements generating the form, the rotation and the translation.
The real challenge of this phase of work has been to take under control the twisted shape in relationship with the function and the necessary performance request from the user: to sit. Viewing the development of the form, I discovered the real possibility to offer different sides of seating in the same object: oh my gosh, really close to the French reference! Looking at Fusillo, it is easy to recognize three different layers of seating available.
As usual at this step of my work, the time has come to translate the sketches developed until now into practical information. That’s the showdown of the creation process: every theoretic evaluation becomes the starting point for the software data, so using standard modeling instruments I’ve checked step-by-step the feasibility of the shell, processing the engineering phase.
Finally the physical phase! I’m going to describe the most interesting part — that’s my point of view — of the industrial designer work: standing beside to the people who MAKE real your thought. After the first polystyrene arrangement, just to control proportions and sloping part, we’ve arranged a wood model in scale 1:1 and after many correction by hand, we’ve defined the official basic “object” necessary to manufacture the mold.
The type of mold has been conditioned from the type of the finishing that Fusillo will offer and considering the polished lacquering as the best result to obtain, we’ve decide to manufacture a fiberglass mold with a gel-coated inner finish. All of the people around this project were really curious to control the first result: “well done!” was the dissertation — a good compromise between weight and stability, but overall a short time to assembling each part.
Usually the final phase of the creation process is the finishing process, in which I have to wait for what seems to be the longest step. I remember that I asked the supplier many times when the first Fusillo will be ready for me to test and every time he answered “Architect, knowing your standard quality request we need one day more…” — an endless time for me…
Finally, the first Fusillo is now available! It looks like a natural shape, an organic gesture to permit “social interaction.”
Viewing the final result and its features I’ve faced the final step: multiply the seats following the conceptual idea to create a real “module.” Technically speaking the last topic investigated has been the joint between each Fusillo: it will “have to be strong and slim at the same time” was my nightmare, and the aluminium insert was the answer.
The thought was to offer a public seating to use in different location, also in outdoor situation, but the main aim has been to create an item able to live NOT ALONE, as the users.
