ran amitai: nature of material

nature of material by ran amitai

ran amitai, a recent graduate of the bezalel academy of art and design of jerusalem, israel, developed the ‘nature of material’ project, a series of stackable furniture, as his final thesis at bezalel.

‘in the beginning I worked mainly with paper, making small scale models’ says amitai. ‘whenever I saw potential or a need to check stability I translated the small paper model in to a life size sheet metal model.‘

every object is folded from a spread of laser cut aluminum sheet, which then bends to the final form using a bending mold.

the making of the stool

the idea of the project is to combine straight origami like folds with natural folds.

‘all of the objects are created by planed and exact folds that create side effects of stretching and bending in the material. in other words, I am folding the legs of the objects and the surface above reacts naturally to the folding act’ says amitai.

a low table

nature of material stools and chairs paper models

nature of material stackable stools

testing the stool

nature of material stackable chairs

‘this integration between the strict and natural folds creates a steady construction from one hand and soft, organic, upholstery like shape from the other hand’ ran amitai says.

ran amitai is part of the israeli design group bakery, which will be showing in the upcoming salone satellite 2010, milan, italy