Waive by Matthias Pliessnig
Waive is a bench made from an open grid of curved timber slats by US designer-maker Matthias Pliessnig.
To create the piece, Pliessnig borrowed a technique he learned while building his own boat recently.
Pliessnig plans to develop longer versions of the bench.
Here's some text from Pliessnig:
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Waive (2007)
In the summer of 2005 I built a boat which I've been sailing for the past two years. The experience from building the boat gave me a new skill-set which allowed me to make wood achieve the strength qualities (and beauty) of compound curves.
This has lead to a body of work that investigates influence from nature’s engineering and our interaction with strange furniture.
Waive is full of compound curves, making the piece very lightweight and strong.
'Double-block-laminations' help tremendously with the strength (the Wright brothers used this method to construct their ribs in the Wright flyer).
Waive is 'pressed' down in the centre and 'pulled up' on the ends to gesture a place one can sit.
I will be working on longer versions of this piece with more areas to sit. The eventual goal of this work is it to custom-build/design site specific pieces inside architecture.