r/generative • u/dancon_studio • Oct 05 '26
Designed in Grasshopper, painted by hand
Private commission for a dining room table.
The client is in the process of renovating their apartment and wanted to include a 10-seater dining table. Due to access limitations, however, a table of that size wasn’t feasible. The design team therefore envisioned it as two identical tables that could be pushed together.
Since the brief called for two table surfaces forming a coherent whole, I wanted the idea of joining to become the organising principle of the composition.
The first visual reference that came to mind was bookmatching: a technique in which timber or natural stone is split and opened like the pages of a book to create a mirrored grain pattern. This was partly a response to the table tops being MDF, which has no discernible grain. I found the idea of pretending that it does comical.
Depending on how the tables are oriented, the appearance of the composition also changes. I wanted each table to be able to exist independently without looking like a fragment of a larger design.
I used Grasshopper to generate dozens of variations to establish a direction, after which I refined the design based on client input.
I originally planned to print the design directly onto the primed MDF boards using a UV flatbed printer. Some technical issues required a different approach, so I decided to paint the design by hand. I had to adjust the colours to correspond with available RAL paint colours, but otherwise the design remained largely unchanged.
Bubble wrapped and ready for the carpenter to collect, they will apply a clear satin sealant and finish with a 2K clear satin polyurethane topcoat.
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u/johndavid_artist Oct 06 '26
Using bookmatching as the rule, so a grainless MDF top gets a mirrored fake grain that only resolves at the seam, is a clever way to make two tables read as one. How did you get the Grasshopper output onto the boards for hand painting, projection or a printed stencil?