“When scientists make use of the freedom and emotional creativity of artists, and artists make use of the skill and discipline of scientists, great things can happen.” — Joris Laarman
Our digital age makes it possible to not just use nature as a stylistic reference, but to actually use its underlying evolutionary principles to generate shapes. For his groundbreaking Bone series, Laarman translates the complexity, proportion and functionality of organic growth in to physical objects. The series is based on an algorithm that calculates an ideal structure to bear a curved seat. This digital design process yields a result that looks quite similar to a human skeleton, or the branches of a tree – biological efficiency, reproduced by a machine. Laarman asserts that in these works, he is “sculpting with mother nature’s underlying codes.”
The Bone Chair (2006) is the first work conceived in the Bone seres and was debut at Smart Deco, a period room of the 21st century presented by Friedman Benda and Droog at Design Miami 2016. The chair subsequently entered important museum collection around the world, including the Centraal Museum Utrecht, the Netherlands, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
The Bone Chair and Bone Chaise on display in “Design and the Elastic Mind” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008:
Drawing for Bone Rocker:
Bone series was included in traveling exhibition “Joris Laarman Lab: Design in the Digital Age” at Groninger Museum, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, High Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 2015-2018:
