The aim of the xylem project was to investigate the possibilities of digital fabrication technologies and computational design methodologies. The xylem project is neither a table, a bench or a stool; it’s a family of objects which can be co-designed by the clients, using a custom built software, to best suit their needs and tastes.

The software, developed in Processing, is designed in order to allow the modification of the xylem’s shape by the users. In order to generate the table and ensure a safer use for users I’ve used three mathematical principles. The Convex Hull and the Voronoi Diagram are direct responsible for the table shape, while the physical simulator is used to guarantee a minimum border length of 15 cm.

The creative process is divided in three phases. In the first phase the user can design the top surface by dragging the control points of the shape. The resulting wire structure is based on the Voroni diagram, that guarantiees an uniform distribution of the elements in the space, and it’s both a decorative motive of the top surface and the origin of the legs. In the second step the user can check the object in a 3D space and change legs proportions. In the last step it’s possible to choose among a range of different materials and colors and place the order.

Each xylem is fabricated on demand using digital fabrication machinery. The top surface is milled and the voronoi lines filled with colored resin; legs are watercut out from 5mm thick aluminium foil and then painted.

You can download the software for Windows, MacOS, or Linux, and try to co-create your own Xylem.

The Voronoi diagram is a special subdivision of the space that is based on a given a set of points (or seeds).

If evaluated on a bidimensional space for every single points in the plane a cell is created so that is boundaries are the closest possible to the given point than every other point in the plane.

This kind of tessellation is used in a lot of different application spacing from wireless network analisys to polymer physics and robot navigation; and in recent days have been wide used for a vast number of architectural and design projects.

During the development of my thesis project i’ve had the chance to explore this kind of tessellation. In order to analize the esthetic qualities of the diagram; I’ve wrote a small software in Processing that evaluate the tessellation of a squared plane using as seeds a set of points that are recursively generated on a circular pattern. The software allow to change the number of points on the circle, the number of the iteration and the scale factor of the circles

The applet is based on the mesh library created by Lee Byron.

You can play with the applet here.