We wanted to stir things up at the Sourcing Collective this week so decided to launch a Revit furniture family challenge. The terms were simple: think about your favourite design item and replicate it in Revit in less than a day. We opened the challenge to anyone interested in submitting a family. The team did not disappoint. As expected, there was a heavy focus on modernist chairs but an iconic table and light pendant still made their way into the mix. We asked everyone to explain their choice and also highlight the challenges of modelling these unique designs in Revit. Take a look at the results and stories behind them:
Sachintha’s Choice: Red Blue Chair by Dutch architect Gerrit Thomas Rietveld
Why? ‘A colourful game changer in furniture design history.’
Rietveld created the Red Blue Chair by applying principles of space and colour from the De Stijl abstract art theory. This creates an eye-catching spatial composition, the chair feels like it’s simultaneously free floating and following a grid. The type of joint he used where two pieces are connected by dowels is still known today as the Rietveld joint.
The chair is made from 17 individual components: two panels for the seat and the backrest, two slats for the armrests and 13 thinner posts. While individually they are not difficult to model in Revit, ensuring they work together as one furniture item can be tricky. The chair also comes in different sizes so all 17 components had to be interlocked and made to respond to dimensions set up as Type Parameters.
Red Blue Chair Revit Family
Sachintha made use of Type Parameters to set up this family.
Uditha’s Choice: Cesca chair (B32) by Marcel Breuer
Why? ‘A high level of comfort. The cantilever design provides a gentle rocking motion, which can be more comfortable than a rigid chair.’
Marcel Breuer’s B32 chair is a good representation of Bauhaus design principles: simplicity, functionality and smart use of materials. Its undulating shapes and mix of materials are sometimes preferred over the Wassily chair. The Cesca chair, taking its nickname from Breuer’s adopted daughter Francesca, is made from tubular steel, bentwood and cane. It also stands out from Breuer’s other tubular steel pieces as it’s a cantilever chair.
In Revit we made use of Sweeps to create its undulating frame. The biggest test must have been creating the woven cane seat and backrest. To keep it simple, we created a pattern for the woven knot and duplicated it to generate the seating components.
Cesca Chair Revit Family
Uditha made use of Sweeps to set up this family.
Sahan’s Choice: Barcelona Chair (MR 90) by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Why? ‘Simple but yet iconic and exceptional in design.’
The Barcelona chair doesn’t need an introduction. It’s the quintessential Mies chair designed together with Lilly Reich for the German pavilion at the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. Apparently, it was inspired by the curule chair, a folding chair used by aristocrats in ancient Rome. The best example today of a curule chair is the film director’s chair. We also read that it was initially referred to as the Pavilion chair, until Philip Johnson decided to call it the Barcelona chair when he used two chairs for his Mies-designed Manhattan apartment in the early 1930s. We are fans of the timeless elegance of this chair and always have the image of the pair sitting perpendicular to the pavilion free standing wall whenever anyone mentions it.
We wanted to make sure the hand-tufted seat and backseat were accurately represented in Revit to give it a realistic feel. What seemed to have worked best was creating a series of Void shapes to represent the ‘buttons’ without compromising the overall shape of the seat. Using Voids in Revit families is often useful to recreate organic shapes.
Barcelona Chair Revit Family
Sahan made use of Void Shapes to set up this family.
Tameez’s Choice: Wishbone Chair (CH 24) by Han J. Wegner
Why? ‘It has an intricate and timeless elegance that seamlessly integrates all elements that encompass a chair.’
The Wishbone chair is rich in history and culture. Wegner took inspiration from the traditional Chinese chairs, ancient Greek Klismos chairs and 18th century English Windsor chairs to create it. He combined tradition with steam-bending wood methods to reduce the amount of manual labour required to make it. Even though it is known as a symbol of mass-produced Danish furniture, it is still mainly made by hand.
The hand-woven paper cord seat was definitely the trickiest to reproduce in Revit. We managed to recreate it by using the Array tool. This allowed us to take a strand and repeat it a multiple times along a direction.
Wishbone Chair Revit Family
Tameez made use of the Array Tool to set up this family.
Samantha’s Choice: Noguchi Coffee Table by Isamu Noguchi
Why? ‘I always admired the undeniable presence and statement of a Noguchi table.’
It is a beautiful balance of form and function – a perfectly practical yet highly sculptural and fluid piece and it is made from only 3 elements: glass and two identical but mirrored wood base pieces. Taking example from his biomorphic sculptures, Noguchi took an ordinary, everyday object and transformed it into sculpture. Like he said himself: “Everything is sculpture. Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture.”
When it comes to replicating the table in Revit, there is no hiding behind the family. It consisted of only 3 elements so we had to ensure that they not only followed their organic shape but also complemented each other perfectly. We always make use of Reference lines and lock forms to them to be in control of how the Family elements move together.
Noguchi Table Revit Family
Samantha made use of Reference Lines to set up this family.
Kumudu’s Choice: Louis Poulsen PH5 pendant by Danish designer Poul Henningsen
Why? ‘It’s a perfect play of shadow & light with its layered shades & unique shape.”
It’s amusing the PH5 light came about from a ‘mother knows best’ moment: Henningsen’s mother disliked the harsh light of incandescent bulbs so determined her son to create a model that provided glare-free light for a more natural ambiance. It was essential to the designer that the lamp be glare-free while at the same being able to illuminate an entire room. He managed to do this by creating a system of 5 curved aluminium shades to scatter the light in different directions and blue and red fixtures to neutralise the harsh light of incandescent bulbs. We like that we now have the option to get a recycled version of the PH5 lamp, called PH5 Retake, reusing scraps from lamps that would have otherwise been discarded.
The two challenges with Revit were recreating the curvatures of the shades and ensure the family works as a Light Fixture, becoming a light source in renders. We decided to use the Revolve tool for the shades because we could create a consistent profile along an axis. We included a Light Source in the family and this allowed us to decide the light shape and distribution.
PH5 pendant Revit Family
Kumudu made use of the Revolve Tool to set up this family.
We had a great deal of fun with this challenge. Everyone brought new things to the table so we learnt more about the design concepts behind the items but the challenge also made us discover ways to optimise Revit families for project use. It’s good to keep in mind that although there are multiple variants of Revit families easily found online, it’s always best to setup your own in-house families. That way you are in control of level of detail, functionality.variants and meta data. A good Revit family will ensure the health of your Revit project model and libraries. You get the best of both worlds: a nicely detailed furniture 3D model and a sharp project model without compromising on the size of the model or having to deal with lagging.