Aesthetic is clearly the most conspicuous aspect of any design. There are many designers around the world who use aesthetics not only to complement the functionality of the object but also to enhance its visual layout. Kaveh Najafian is one architectural designer who is playing around with this facet and has introduced a series of lounge chairs for the virtual architecture and design studio Contingency Plans.
Dubbed Louhi, the lounge chair lineup is not real-life objects but render designs. Nevertheless, the designer has experimented with imaginative forms despite the high probability of these virtual designs never turning into real-life furnishings. Identical to the shape of any throne you’d see in any fantasy flick, Louhi lounge chairs are not comfortable seating solutions but rather odd and dysfunctional furniture.
“That’s because of that hint of surrealism I assume,” comments Contingency Plans. Furniture and object design has to be more than just function, and the series of chairs is an ode to unorthodox design clamoring for attention via its imaginative forms and abstractive shapes.
In visual terms, aesthetics is determined by various elements including balance, color, shape, and visual weight. Every single lounge chair in the Louhi lineup caters to these requirements and clangor their aesthetic value. It is even unclear what composition is designer trying to show here. Apart from wood, nothing is lucid. All I can spot or decipher are spiral patterns, foam, and some upholstery.
Contingency Plans even had a chat with one of the followers on Instagram where the user commented, ‘my back hurts though but I’m buying it anyway’ with the studio replying, ‘AI-assisted design eventually leads to AI-assisted sitting positions I assume’. So, it’s safe to assume that it’s just fun and game, and nothing serious is cooking within the walls of virtual architecture and design studios. Whatever might be the case, every single chair is aesthetic and a work of art.
Whether it’s the abstracted animal form that is smoothly mingled with furniture design or uncanny shapes and objects that are incorporated within the chair to form a bizarre seating, everything seems to straddle the line in this art cum virtual architecture.
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The designer has used AI tools to hedge the boundaries between what’s real and what’s not. Just like Frank Jacobus, Kaveh utilizes the text-to-image program Midjourney to render his visualizations. Despite these Louhi lounge chairs not being a seating alternative, they will be wonderful NFTs, just saying.
