Flex-Flax

This project deploys two emergent fabrication techniques with Natural Fibres: Tailored Fibre Placement (TFP) and Coreless Filament Winding (CFW). These Fibre-reinforced Polymer methods are leveraged for their abilities to strategically place material to create high-performance differentiated structure and geometry. The novel contribution of this project is exploring the use of a TFP element as a frame for filament winding. Through a bottom-up iterative method, material and structure are explored in an integrative design process. This culminates in a lightweight stool design (ca. 1kg) which can carry approximately 100 times its weight, articulated in a new material-based design tectonic.

Students: Vanessa Costalonga, Sacha Cutajar, Christo van der Hoven,
With support of Benjamin Grisin, IFB University of Stuttgart
Tutor: Piotr Baszyński, Sophie Luz
Suprevisor: Jun.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Arch. Hanaa Dahy
Design Studio: Material and Structure, WS 19/20, University of Stuttgart.