Tomoko Azumi is a research fellow at London Metropolitan University. Her design studio produces furniture, products and installations for prestigious European and Japanese clients such as Isokon Plus, Lapalma and Muji.
Tomoko was fascinated by the possibilities of rapid prototyping to assist her in the creative process: “I wanted to use the technology in a different and less controlling way, closer to my feelings, and to throw an element of chance into the machine.”
Using the Faro 3D Laser Scanner she had a twig scanned and transferred into CAD. Then having defined a block of space on the CAD screen, Tomoko repeatedly and randomly “threw the scanned twig into the box [the defined area on CAD]”. The resulting design was then built in a white Polyamide (nylon) on the Selective Laser Sintering machine (SLS). She found that crossing points of the twigs had merged – the machine had welded them together, “Something that doesn’t happen in nature,” she comments.
For the next sculpture, Tomoko used the same twig data, but stretched and bent it in CAD before it went into the SLS machine. This resulted in a curved twig sculpture. Finally, she used the same data again, but enlarged the scale of the twig, and threw lots of them into the defined space. The twigs were then cut and hollowed in CAD, leaving the outer surfaces which fused together.
Tomoko says: “I was testing how you can get rid of hand control – the unpredictability of the machine is nice. I think this lack of control is close to what happens in nature. We find out the beauty of nature by chance. Normally we don’t touch the world, but we feel it is very beautiful.”
The idea for producing the twig sculptures using the rapid prototyping machine originated from a screen Tomoko designed for a restaurant interior using real twigs. “I wanted to see how the shape of natural things we are familiar with translated into white polymer,” she comments.
Tomoko believes that Metropolitan Works provides a fantastic opportunity for designers and makers to experiment with this cutting edge machinery, detached from its usual setting within major industries such as Formula One and British Aerospace.
She says: “Metropolitan Works’ role is to connect advanced technology to the creative industries. As yet, not very many designers and makers are using this technology in an experimental way, but here they have the opportunity to try it out without having to invest in the equipment.”
