Ben Patzina, Dario Thanner, Marius Kintzel: STAU, 2025
Type: Semester Project Degree Programme: Product Design Professorship: Emerging Technologies and Design Supervision: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Pearce, Philipp Enzmann, Katharina Thurow, Lukas Kirschnick, Paing Su Ko

STAU is a piece of seating furniture with three seating surfaces, designed as part of a theoretically infinitely expandable structure. For this purpose, only branch forks are used – an often unnoticed by-product of the timber industry that offers both formal and constructive advantages thanks to its natural fiber structure.

STAU was created as part of irreguLAB, a teaching laboratory for digital design and fabrication with irregular materials. In order to be able to work with the branch forks, they are digitized, catalogued in a database and grouped according to similarity. With the help of an alignment algorithm, the geometries of the digitized branch forks are matched to each other in such a way that optimal longitudinal connections are created. This creates a dialog between a rigid structure and the natural material, in which the specific shapes of the branch forks are taken into account. The irregularity of the material is digitally curated by us as designers, creating unpredictable constructions. The piece of furniture was manufactured using a CNC milling machine.

Conceptually, STAU takes up the scenario of waiting, inspired by waiting situations in public spaces. This approach is also reflected in the design of the surfaces: a subtle gradient subtractively reveals the final shape of the stool.

With STAU, we want to show new ways in which grown components can be used in furniture construction. The stool serves as an object of study that investigates the influence of material properties on design.

Product Design
Emerging Technologies and Design
Ben Patzina
Dario Thanner
Marius Kintzel
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Pearce
Philipp Enzmann
Katharina Thurow
Lukas Kirschnick
Paing Su Ko