Designing for a Good CauseEach year, Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS calls on major designers to create dining installations for fund-raisers. For years, SOM has participated in the event by conceiving not only tables but total dining environments. DIFFA is an opportunity for the firm to explore unconventional design and fabrications processes—an annual laboratory for innovation.
Exploring Cutting-Edge Processes In 2005, The Design used a new acrylic polymer material to create a seamless, organically-curved space. The follow year’s angular design studied how an interior environment could be distorted through a “genetic” process and still satisfy functional and acoustic requirements. In 2007, design created luminous partitions out of laser- cut metal screens with lyrical patterns derived from traditional Middle Eastern geometries.
