Chief Dull Knife College Furniture for Early Childhood Learning Center
Lame Deer, MT (2005)

Lead faculty: Peter Aeschbacher, Jason Boris, Loukas Kalisperis

Students: Daniel Howard, David Niemiec, Luke Sinopoli, Samuel Tsou, Seth Wilberding, Mathew Wisniewski, Kevin Woo

Partners: American Indian Housing Initiative, Chief Dull Knife College

Sponsors: College of Arts and Architecture Digital Design & Fabrication Initiative

The integration of digital design and fabrication technologies for children's furniture at a tribal childcare center represents an innovative approach to computer-aided design that focuses on the end-users, the tectonics of construction, and the qualities of the materials used. This revisiting of Vitruvius's fundamentals of Commodity, Firmness, and Delight represents a step away from many of the “first wave” of digital designs that delighted primarily in machine gymnastics, often at the price of the end user's needs. Alongside a series of introductory exercises using a laser cutter and a CNC 3-axis milling machine, students investigated the nature of children's activities, the options of materials, and the logic of construction. Their designs were first realized entirely in a virtual arena, then via small-scale models, and finally at full scale. What makes this process most remarkable is the fact that a single computer model was used for all scales of fabrication.