Computational Graphic final project

• Student Francesco Elefante
• Student ID 417137
• GitHub @fran90

The subject

The architect: Marcel Breuer

Marcel Lajos Breuer, (21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981), was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent. One of the masters of Modernism, Breuer displayed interest in modular construction and simple forms.
Breuer was born on 21 May 1902 in the provincial city of Pecs, Hungary. His early study and teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau in the twenties introduced the wunderkind to the older giants of the era of whom three – Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius – were to have life-long influence upon his professional life.
By the time he left Germany in 1935 to join Gropius in London, Breuer was one of the best-known designers in Europe. His reputation was based upon his invention of tubular steel furniture, one big residence, two apartment houses, some shop interiors and several competition entries.
Two years later, Gropius asked him to join Harvard’s architecture faculty and, during WWII their partnership revolutionized American house design while teaching a whole generation of soon-to-be famous architects.
On his own in New York in 1946, Breuer saw a practice that had been essentially residential finally expand into institutional buildings with the UNESCO Headquarters commission in Paris in 1952 and the first of many buildings for Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN two years later.
His New York-based firm moved through three ever-larger offices, with a branch in his beloved Paris to handle work in seven European countries; he gathered five young partners in the process.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Breuer pioneered the design of tubular steel furniture. Later in his career he would also turn his attention to the creation of innovative and experimental wooden furniture.
By 1968, when he won the AIA’s Gold Medal, he could look back on such world-famous monuments as New York’s Whitney Museum (probably the best known), IBM’s La Gaude Laboratory (his personal favorite), the headquarters of the Departments of HUD and HEW in Washington DC (he finally felt American), and Flaine (an entire ski-town in the French Alps). In that same year, he won the first Jefferson Foundation Medal that cited him “among all the living architects of the world as excelling all others in the quality of his work.”

Breuer: tubular steel furniture

Inspired by the strength and elegance of his bicycle handlebars, budding designer Marcel Breuer approached a local bike factory manager with an idea for developing and manufacturing furniture using tubular steel. The factory manager politely dismissed him. His reason? “It has never been done”. Had that bicycle maker possessed a little more vision, he would be a major part of design history – and possibly a very wealthy man. Because today, tubular steel “Breuer chairs” have “been done” in almost every conceivable fashion, and are arguably one of the most popular and recognisable furniture designs on the planet. The stunning result appeared in 1925, when Breuer realised his goal of designing the first bent tubular steel chair. The Wassily Chair – which despite some claims was not designed for the artist Wassily Kandinsky – became an instant sensation. More steel-based designs followed, including his famous Laccio tables, stools, cupboards and other pieces Breuer considered “essential designs for modern living”. The cantilevered steel chair known simply today as the “Breuer Chair” first appeared in 1928 after years of development. Usually featuring a wood and cane seat and seatback, this simple yet iconic design adheres to the strict Bauhaus principle of two sets of structures, one carrying the load and one supporting the body. These chairs were so ahead of their time that they did not reach the peak of their popularity for almost a half-century, becoming modernist must-haves in the 1970s. He also applied the same principals used in his tubular steel pieces to plywood furniture, creating some elegant and functional new designs. All adhered to his personal philosophy, “Structure is not just a means to a solution. It is also a principle and a passion”. It is that principle and passion that has allowed Marcel Breuer’s designs to endure into the 21st century.

The Project

K40 sofa table

K40 sofa table was designed between 1927 and 1928. It utilizes the same shapes and forms commonly seen throughout other Breuer tables. The Breuer K40 Sofa table is one of Breuer's most elegant table designs. Breuer was a pioneer, and quickly became a master, at using tubular steel. The K40 table is a fine example of Breuer's ability to bend tubular steel into a useful object for the home.

The k40 sofa table basically consists of three parts:
1) tubular steel supports
2) tubular steel rectangle
3) circular glass plane

were generated as hollow cylinders in the straight sections and in the curved parts such as surfaces created with the plasm function: cubichermite. Also tubolar steel rectangle was created so, alternating cylinders and surfaces of Hermite following the natural shape of the model. Circular glass plane was modeled by generating two neighboring discs and coloring of glass, giving it an appropriate transparency. To create the fill between the two disks were made ​​two circles between which was generated a surface of bezier, thus making the model slightly lighter than a solid.

function circl (sel) {
return function (r) {
return function (d_z) {
return function (p) {
return [ r * COS(sel(p)), r * SIN(sel(p)), d_z ];
}; }; }; };

glass_color = [185/256,211/256,238/256,0.6];
var model1 = DISK(4.6)([64,4]);
var model2=T([3])([0.2])(model1)
var c = circl(S1)(4.6)(0);
var c2 = circl(S1)(4.6)(0.2);
var domain = PROD1x1([INTERVALS(2*PI)(32),INTERVALS(1)(1)]);
var ou = MAP(BEZIER(S2)([c2,c]))(domain);
glass=STRUCT([model1,model2,ou])
glass=COLOR(glass_color)(glass)

S285 desk

This tubular steel desk is a successful example of the Bauhaus' programmatic claim of combining art and technology into a formal unit. The tabletop and storage elements made of varnished or stained wood harmonically fit in with the tubular steel design. The supporting frame consists of a single line; the wooden elements seem to float in it. The simple piece of furniture, which is formally balanced in its proportions, represents an expressive piece of contemporary history known as "The New Objectivity."

S285 desk consists of:
1)tubular steel supports
2)drawers
3)table

The table and the drawers were generated with simple cuboids: the first one almost flat for the table and the second one with dimensions of 3x3x1 for the drawers. To model the steel support were used some cylinders (function cyl_surface in plasm.js and cylinder in pyplasm) and cubic surfaces of hermite (function cubichermite).
The following code shows how curved tubular pieces were created:

domain= PROD1x1([INTERVALS(1)(32),INTERVALS(1)(32)]);
var c1 = CUBIC_HERMITE(S1)([[1,0,0],[0,0,-1],[0,0,-2],[-3,0,0]]);
DRAW(MAP(c1)(INTERVALS(1)(14)));
var c2 = CUBIC_HERMITE(S1)([[0.8,0,0],[0,0,-0.8],[0,0,-1.8],[-2.6,0,0]]);
DRAW(MAP(c2)(INTERVALS(1)(14)));
var sur = CUBIC_HERMITE(S2)([c1,c2,[0,-0.4,0],[0,0.4,0]]);
var out = MAP(sur)(domain); //mezzo tubo
DRAW(out);
var sur2 = CUBIC_HERMITE(S2)([c1,c2,[0,0.4,0],[0,-0.4,0]]);
var out2 = MAP(sur2)(domain); //mezzo tubo
tubo=STRUCT([out,out2])
DRAW(tubo)

The form of Hermite consists of two control points and two control tangents for each polynomial. In our case c1 and c2 are the two interpolated curves, from which we will create two half tubes complementary.

Long chair

Long Chair by Marcel Breuer designed in 1936 is a classic in the history of interior design of the twentieth century. Inspired by the work of Alvar Aalto, the structure of the chaise longue is made of maple ply curved while the seat is made of bent plywood covered with polyurethane foam and upholstered in a wide range of cladding: aniline leather, full grain calf or printed, woven categories different or imitation leather.

The lounge chair is made up of:
1)backrest
2)armrests
3)supports

For the realization of the chair were used Bezier curves from which were then generated surfaces.
Armrests, backrest and supports were modeled with the appropriate curves, breaking each component in 3-4 parts.

var domain = INTERVALS(1)(32);
var domain2 = PROD1x1([INTERVALS(1)(16),INTERVALS(1)(16)]);
var controlpoints =   [[0.31,0, -0.57],[0.70,0, -0.97] ,[0.05,0, -0.9],[0.92,0, -1.90]]; 
var curveMapping = BEZIER(S0)(controlpoints);
var curve = MAP(curveMapping)(domain);

var controlpoints =   [[0.31,1.7, -0.57],[0.70,1.7, -0.97] ,[0.05,1.7, -0.9],[0.92,1.7, -1.90]]; 
var curveMapping2 = BEZIER(S0)(controlpoints);
var curve2 = MAP(curveMapping2)(domain);

var controlpoints =   [[0.21,0, -0.57],[0.60,0, -0.97] ,[-0.05,0, -0.9],[0.82,0, -1.90]]; 
var curveMapping11 = BEZIER(S0)(controlpoints);
var curve11 = MAP(curveMapping11)(domain);

var controlpoints =   [[0.21,1.7, -0.57],[0.60,1.7, -0.97] ,[-0.05,1.7, -0.9],[0.82,1.7, -1.90]]; 
var curveMapping12 = BEZIER(S0)(controlpoints);
var curve12 = MAP(curveMapping12)(domain);

var out = MAP(BEZIER(S2)([curveMapping,curveMapping2]))(domain2);
var outs = MAP(BEZIER(S2)([curveMapping11,curveMapping12]))(domain2);
var outp = MAP(BEZIER(S2)([curveMapping,curveMapping11]))(domain2);
var outp6 = MAP(BEZIER(S2)([curveMapping2,curveMapping12]))(domain2);
DRAW(STRUCT([out,outs,outp,outp6]))

So were created four "twin" curves which were then interpolated in pairs to generate the desired surfaces.

Wassily chair

The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was concurrently on the Bauhaus faculty. However, Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer fabricated a duplicate for Kandinsky's personal quarters. This chair was revolutionary in the use of the materials (bent tubular steel and canvas) and methods of manufacturing. It is said that the handlebar of Breuer's 'Adler' bicycle inspired him to use steel tubing to build the chair, and it proved to be an appropriate material because it was available in quantity. The design (and all subsequent steel tubing furniture) was technologically feasible only because the German steel manufacturer Mannesmann had recently perfected a process for making seamless steel tubing. Previously, steel tubing had a welded seam, which would collapse when the tubing was bent.

The chair consists of:
1)steel tubes
2)black leather stripes

Steel tubes were realized with some cylinders where there were straight sections and with cubichermite where there were curved sections. Leather stripes were realized with some cuboids.

Disclaimer

All the original furniture images, their description and the informations about Breuer life and work, are taken from wikipedia,marcelbreuer.org, bauhaus2yourhose.com, design-museum.de, aroots.org and bonluxat.