This article was taken from the September 2011 issue of
Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print
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Forget flat-pack: the future of furniture is
inflatable steel. That's the vision of Oskar Zieta, a Polish designer who uses the
technique to make resilient pieces such as ladders, chairs and
stools. And his latest, the Tatarak coat stand, can be blown up at
home with little more than a bicycle pump.
This product (which you can see in our gallery) uses three small
rolls of stainless-steel sheet that look more like a Fruit Roll-Ups
than designer décor. But pump air into the small valves, and the
metal unfurls into an elegantly contorted coat stand. "We call it
'controlled loss of control'," explains Zieta. "It means every
piece is one of a kind."
An architect by
training, Zieta, who is 36, developed the FiDU (Free Inner Pressure
Deformation) process while studying techniques for stabilising
sheet metal at ETH Zurich. Steel sheets as thin as 1mm are cut into
2D shapes and layered on top of each other. The edges are then
sealed with a laser welder. To
inflate, pressurised air (ranging between 0.1 and 50Bar) is pumped
in via a valve, forcing the metal to expand. Unlike the
hydroforming method used in automobile manufacturing, FiDU doesn't
use a mould, so the metal deforms according to its natural
"We can predict how the deformed object will look by the
geometry of the cut, the pressure level, and the anisotropy [innate
directional properties] of the material," Zieta explains. The
result is both lightweight and remarkably strong. The Plopp stool
(above right), an early (award-winning) FiDU piece, can support
more than two tonnes. His team is already exploring other
applications for the process, including bridges and an
ultra-lightweight wind rotor, and testing the technique with other
metals, such as aluminium and copper.
For Zieta, even the sky isn't the limit. "My dream project is
constructions in space, where FiDU's ultra-lightness and
possibilities of volumetric expansion could be crucial," he says.
And you thought inflatable furniture was just for pool parties.