Industrial design student Tianzhu Zhang worked together with a group of colleagues (see the full list at the end of this article), to create a sculptural wood and concrete bench using robotic fabrication methods. As with most products designed today, the bench started out as a computer render to envision what the bench will look like once finished.
In this diagram, you can see how the flow and lines of the bench carries from the plywood through to the concrete ends. Here’s a look at all of the components that are used to create the bench. The wood pieces were cut out using a CNC machine, and a robotic arm was used to carve out foam forms that would then become the molds for the concrete ends. Once the concrete hardened, it was then able to be removed from the mold and attached to cnc wooden slices, resulting in a completed bench.
Photography by Tianzhu Zhang
Group members – Tianzhu zhang, Christian Terlato, Samuel Mulkearns, Hao wu, Anh Dong, Peter Higgins
Studio – Roboto — Rmit industrial design
Supervisors – Dr Scott Mayson & Ryan Pennings
Partners – Autodesk, RMIT Architectural Robotic Lab
