The designer’s most recent collaboration with Milgo/Bufkin explores mass customization

Architect-morphologist Haresh Lalvani is continuing his longtime relationship with Brooklyn-based fabricator Milgo/Bufkin with the Morphing Fruit Platter 1D Series 300, which was unveiled at this year’s Design Miami as part of the Moss exhibit, Mass Customization of Emergent Designs. The 100 platters presented at Moss represent the designer’s latest thoughts about the intersection of mathematics and manufacturing based on a process he calls Lautomation.

• Fabricator Milgo/Bufkin
• Designer Haresh Lalvani
• Location New York, New York
• Status In progress
• Material Steel
• Process Morphological genome, Lautomation, laser-cutting

Derived from the term “Length Automation,” Lautomation is a new way to automate patterns for mass-produced, mass-customized shapes. The process generates infinite patterns with an automatic, 1-D equation based on length. When applied to any selected length, Lalvani’s algorithm creates a series of patterns, each an evolution of the previous one ad infinitum. The Fruit Platters’ “length” of 300 refers to 300 points on a continuous curve, giving each plate 300 perforations. As in his other work, Lalvani said the process represents a “morphological genome” because the size, shape, and position of each platter’s holes are different.

Made with powder-coated, laser-cut steel, Milgo/Bufkin has produced only 100 of the 12-inch-diameter platters. Each one is numbered according to its position in the morphological sequence, which created 1,000 patterns in all. And just in time for the holidays: It’s not too late to give loved ones their own piece of newly-formed design DNA (for $700). According to the Moss web site, “The 900 platters from this series which have not yet been realized can be ordered, with no surcharge. This is to reinforce the new reality of digital production: the elimination of ‘economy of scale’, whereby making ‘more’ of something costs less. This historic paradigm—one of the tenets of the Industrial Revolution—will no longer be a truth.” Each piece is accompanied by a 12-minute animation of all 1,000 patterns created in the series.