Conservation is a chair inspired by Sol Lewitt's drawing instructions. It follows a simple algorithm that can generate many different complex chairs.

I built Conservation for my first project in 4.031: Design Studio - Objects & Interaction, where we were tasked with creating a seat based on a set of simple design instructions.

The rules for building a Conservation chair are simple:

1. Get a rectangular prism.
2. Split into four.
3. Take one of the fourths and attach somewhere else.
4. Repeat the process with the smaller rectangular prisms.
5. Once finished, build structure and fill in sides as wanted.

Here is a 2D visual representation of one iteration of the process:

I sketched nine chair ideas as well as their generative rules, ultimately deciding on Conservation.

Before building my Conservation chair, I built a prototype to test my generative rules out of balsa wood.

Learn more about the class I built this for here: