This rocking bench was realized as part of Product Development Laboratory, held in Politecnico di Milano. The main objectives were to create an iconic product to tell the industrial background of DA A, a design spin-off of Alcar metal industries, using their unique technologies in the forniture field.
Since Alcar is renowned for their components for heavy duty machines, we decided to elaborate a symbol of that field introducing it into a domestic environment. So we take the shape and the function of a loader, and we adapted it to be comfortable, funny and good looking.
My main responsibilities for Passatempo were to understand the limits and possibilities of sheet metal bending and laser cutting. So we can use them as their best. Using a 500T press is not common when we are talking about furniture design, so we want to gain an advantage from those production systems. The seat is made by bending a 10mm iron sheet, the same thickness used for the lateral supports made by laser cutting.
I had to make work the swing too. We kept the mechanism simple and brutal, just like the heavy-duty machines. There’s a huge pin, where a bearing, fixed to the seat let it swing. But we do not want a free rotation of a 60kg object, so using another pin and a rail we established a maximal rotation of 60° degrees, 30° forward and 30° backward. Just to avoid some backflips upon a 100kg bench.
