| ABOUT | PROJECTS | RESEARCH | PRESS | NEWS and EVENTS | CONTACT |
COMMERCIAL
EDUCATIONAL
HEALTH CARE
OFFICE
PRODUCT DESIGN
RESIDENTIAL
RECREATIONAL
Envisioning the new frontier of socialization, the research Lab Nonlinear Solutions Unit proposed the interactive installation Social Cave.
While entering in the 100% recycled foam Cave, visitors are invited to interact with the projected ‘shadow’ of the visitor beyond the barrier wall, initiating a conversation that transcends traditional digital-physical boundaries.
Project Info: Honor guest at Salone Satellite in Milan: 50+50 Designing the Future
Concept + Schematic Design: Non Linear Solutions Unit / GSAPP Columbia University - Caterina Tiazzoldi
Interaction Design with: Mirko Arcese and Luca Biada (BCAA.it)
http://www.arch.columbia.edu/labs/nonlinearsolutions/social-cave-milano
http://vimeo.com/23061862
Designed as a hybrid between a co working and a corporate building, Toolbox responds to a professional reality increasingly represented by freelance workers.
From the perspective of the design process, the goal was to mediate between the plurality of users’ needs and the coherence of the design. The variety of solutions obtained demonstrates the use of a unique design rule inspired by genetic algorithms. By combining the attributes and building blocks of a population, it is possible to achieve a bigger variety of solutions responding to different fitness requirements.
Project leader: Caterina Tiazzoldi; Consultant: Aurelio Balestra, Giulio Milanese; Team: A. Balzano, T. Branquinho, H. Cany, C. Caramassi, L. Croce, M. Fassino, M. Pianosi; Client: IOS S.p.A.; Award: Special mention Contech Award 2010
www.toolboxoffice.it
Illy Temporary Shop - 2011
By using a parametric device the bar is conceived to be redesigned and reassembled.
In this way it is possible to automatically develop a solution permitting to fit to the different locations: design events, fair, display for mall or corners for bar.
By reconfiguring the different modules according with the performances required (accessibility of the products from the outside, number of item to display, level of transparency desired) it is possible to achieve endless solutions. This idea reflects illy concept as a unique product having the capacity to reconfigures in different formats.
Once installed users can move some of the block and use them as a table or bench.
In this way each one can invent his own way to leave the bar experience.
Project leader: Caterina Tiazzoldi; Team: L. Croce, F. Rizzo, R. Musso, A. Primavera, M. Pianosi, M. Fassino
Parametric Bookshelves - 2006
Parametric Bookshelves was presented at the Young Talent Selection by Giulio Cappellini at the Temporary Museum for New Design During Milano Design Week.
Each customer introduces data (length, height, preferred colours) and the parametric system responds by automatically changing some of the attributes (depth, thickness, colour saturation). In this way each customer is assured of a unique configuration. Parametric Bookshelves develop and produce an infi nite number of unique pieces, tailored to the customer's requirements, using a single model. Each element composing Parametric Bookshelves is defi ned by tree attributes affecting Parametric Bookshelves configuration. Each Parametric Bookshelves is provided of a code as a customerwarranty of the uniqueness and originality of the piece. The application of a large number of iterations to a limited number of rules leads to a level of formal complexity and sophistication
which it is impossible to obtain from traditional processes.
The vision is not only to customize a piece. People bulid their own environment.
Project leader: Caterina Tiazzoldi; Team: L. Croce, D. Keller
Building Bookshelves - 2010
capacity to change and transform in accord with the
surrounding environment. It can adapt to different urban contexts by matching with the surrounding buildings height and modulation.
It can fit adapt to different types of landmark requirement and to the number of units. The collapse between geometries permits to create areas that usually are extracted form pure volumes: kitchen bathrooms derivers from the volumetric intersection.
Project leader: Caterina Tiazzoldi; Team: L. Croce, Y. Lazovskaya
Toolbox Extension OSI AREA - 2010
We started to envion a scenario of what the people would look for in an industrial space for and desire and how interaction could happen between the city and the block, between the people and the block. We started to emplement a multicriteria design process deriving from
the combinatiorial methodology.
We don't know what the area is going to look like and which type of urban transformation is going to happen.
We decided to create a centripetal space. We decide to avoid classical green needing maintenance. Instead we chose to plant a forest on the top of the industrial slab using the 5 feet thickness of the industrial structure and host the terrain necessary to host oaks.
Project leader: Caterina Tiazzoldi; Team: A. Capello, L. Parodi, J. Zaratiegui
Digital Primitive Banana Installation and Parametriuc Bookshelves - 2009
The digital primitive event banana installation + parametric bookshelves has been commissioned by the Temporary Museum for New Design in occasion of the Milano Furniture Fair 2009.
It is a curatorial project developed by Caterina Tiazzoldi and Eduardo Benamor Duarte as a critical analysis of contemporary design in NY.
“They are Digital, because they are the first generation of New York designers and architects formed in a context characterized by digital modeling techniques and computer numeric control fabrication (CNC). They are Primitive because they have to respond to the limitations deriving from a city like New York.”
The banana installation ironically uses a parametric application to organize the distribution of the bananas (number of bananas on each node).
The choice of the banana in the installation has a double intention. On one hand its remind the idea of jungle-ness of the city of New York, where digital primitive designers are located. The second reason is that the banana installation was very playful and created an amusing reaction in the public.
For people who have been walking for hours in the Salone, the view of the bananas created an immediate spontaneous reaction. A kind of relief from the intellectual tension created by processing and judging endless pieces of furniture.
The Banana Installation was a self dismantling installation. The mature banana where dismantled and piled on a corner of the installation.
Project leaders: Caterina Tiazzoldi, Eduardo Benamor Duarte; Team: L. Croce, L. Spano, C. Caramassi
Prototyping the city - 2008
“Playgrounds and public spaces need room, fields to playand act in, and objects to play with, identify with and react against. This is architecture, the rest is city life”. CHORA, Raoul Bunschoten, “Public Spaces – Prototypes”.
The experiment of Prototyping the city was based on the criteria that a product of urban design must operate at different levels contemporarily.
The brief of the project, entitled “biodegrading pavilion”, indicates a typological reference: the pavilion, hybridized with the programmatic function of info-point for Torino 2008 World Design Capital, and its biological condition as a temporary “coagulation of matter” designed to disintegrate back into nature at the end of its life cycle.
The workshop structure was instead defined as a “matrix” which coordinated the activities of the group in parallel co-evolving layers. The result was a parametrically controlled diagram organizing the basic construction units [wooden sticks] into a coherent structural assemblage while generating small cocoon spaces which branched out of the main “tunnel”. These spaces became the niches which housed the informational layer that constituted the first point of contact between the visitors and the summer school events. This platform was then expanded in a web based blog capable of reaching out to world.
Client: Torino World Design Capital;
Project leader: C. Tiazzoldi, C. Griffa, C. Pasquero, M. Poletto; http://protocity.blogspot.com/
Onion Pinch - 2009
By approaching the project we wanted to create a space having the capacity to transform, by its physicality, the life in a subway station. We wanted to identify a design concept and a very simple construction technique. We wanted to create an intimate relation between material properties and user's physicality.
Cork is very flexible. Flexibility means elasticity and vibration. Thanks to its flexibility, it was possible to shape the cork.
The onion rings were realized with different cork types and thicknesses. The installation was articulated in a series of internal paths in which babies could run, walk, climb, lay and rock. The tracks were articulated by the opening or closing of the profiles.
The unique parameter, ‘position on the Z axis of the bolt’, affected another condition of the rings: the flexibility or level of vibration.
When installed in the subway the Onion installation immediately became an urban toy. The presence of an extremely alive object, with its texture, with the oscillation of the Onion rings, transformed an unfamiliar, cold space like the subway station into a lively oasis.
Onion Pinch has been featured at the show Minimaousse 4 at the Paris Museum Cite’ de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine.
Project: Caterina Tiazzoldi and Eduardo Benamor Duarte; Team: T. Branquinho, L. Croce, M. Fassino, K. Seaman, M. Pianosi; Client: Experimenta Design, Compotec, Made
Fabulesque Tables - 2011
Inspired from Alice in Wonderland, Fabulesque it is a series of Table developed for the Circolo dei Lettori located in a Baroque Palace in Torino.
Realized in laminated wood and MDF each table has its own color and profile.
A parametric device permit to adapt all the profile to the different function (smaller for the coffee table, square for the dining table ecc..).
Project: Caterina Tiazzoldi; Team: M. Rosso, F. Rizzo, R. Musso, A. Primavera, Z. Ujhelyi; Client: Circolo dei Lettori di Torino
Porcupine - Throw felt along a curve 2009
Porcupine is an adaptable chair.
Inspired from the fractal growth of a shell, it is realized in felt an fiber glass.
Its design has been generated with a parametric logic that allows to reconfigure in accord with the location and user's inputs. Customers can control the form, the level of proximity between the different seat, the high modulation.
By glimpsing to the typical Rhino tool Throw Curve along Curve, Porcupine transforms abstraction into design.
Porcupine is realized with 40 sheets of felt realized by Pastofo, supported by a fiber glass skeleton realized by POLITROFA. The sheets's height varies from 68 to 30 cm while their spacing shifts according to the pressure of the body's weight or the proximity of a group of sheets.
The design for the porcupine seat is processed through the iteration and transformation of a same component.
In response the warmth and malleability of the felt produces a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibers. These fibers are produced by recycled residual waste processed in a sustainable manner into felt.
Project: Caterina Tiazzoldi and Eduardo Benamor Duarte; Team: M. Fassino, T. Branquinho, K. Seaman
Napping Pods - 2010
A branching tubular structure supports the pods where baby nap.
Each pod is realized with a double shell. Each baby has a mattress. Curved on the bottom part, flat on the top. Personal Mattress/pillows can be easily removed and cleaned.
Napping pod has been designed as a sunflower in the orientation vary from pod to pod : in the higher levels, for smaller children, the opening are oriented toward the ceiling. Babies can only enter or exit with the help of an adult. In the lower levels the pods are slightly rotated. In this way babies can enter and exit as they wish.
Pods are dens, nest where hide where develop a secret personal universe.
Napping pod is a vision of an universe of protection, amusement, complicity and secrets words.
Project: Caterina Tiazzoldi; Team: A. Balzano, M. Pianosi
Please contact us at
Nuova Ordentra sas - PIVA 05122440018 - via fratelli calandra 6 - torino - 10100 - italy