What if you could fold up a sofa and carry it alone when moving? To realize this idea, Panter&Tourron and design agency Space10, which collaborates with IKEA, turned to generative artificial intelligence. The result is a modular sofa weighing about 10 kg, which can be adjusted to the user's needs and carried in a bag similar to an envelope.
10 was looking for new ways to make furniture. Initially, the qatar number data agency was exploring digital manufacturing tools, such as 3D knitting printers. The project was halted due to the pandemic, but about six months ago, Space10 revived it, having received a new tool at its disposal - generative artificial intelligence.
Georgina McDonald from Space10 says: “As part of the initial strategy, I wrote to ChatGPT: ‘Can a sofa fit in an envelope?’ And of course the answer was: ‘No, a sofa won’t fit in an envelope.’ This was a delight for us because the algorithm knows what an envelope and a sofa are.”
Space10 designers came up with hundreds of queries for image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E. According to MacDonald, the team started getting results close to what they wanted when they removed the word couch and added terms like platform, lightweight, tent, hammock, bed, and surface.