Thesis

Coalesce: Leveraging Generative Tools in Industrial Design Practice

Abstract

Generative Design is a design process that entails the collaboration between human designers and software-enabled machines. This thesis explores the ways that generative tools are changing industrial design, proposes some principles and a methodology for working with generative tools, and speculates about the future implications of this practice.

Download the full thesis publication.

Committee

• Jason O. Germany, Chair (Industrial Design)
• Sang-gyeun Ahn (Industrial Design)

Bio

Before joining the MDes program, Justin worked professionally in the field of industrial design at TEAGUE in the Aviation Design studio, at Glosten, a marine design and naval architecture firm, and spent many years as both a fabricator and designer in the museum exhibit industry. In parallel with his design career, Justin has regularly performed improv comedy around Seattle and has found the process of improvisation to be highly beneficial to the design process. Justin enjoys playing games and spending time with his wife Nico and daughter Vega. They all love music and have been known to play moody goth songs together on occasion.

Website

LinkedIn

Education

• Master of Design, University of Washington, 2020
• Bachelor of Science, Industrial Design, Western Washington University, 2010

Commentary

Read the full commentary about Justin Thoreau Lund by Heidi Biggs.

Justin’s project softens the high-tech and techno-futuristic visions that surround generative design and flexible manufacturing. As he takes close looks at the intimate new partnership between designer and AI, a man vs. machine narrative dissolves and one starts to see how machine and man co-shape each other. By choosing to make a bespoke object for his wife, using her unique dimensions, he also interrogates what is invisibly normalized through current manufacturing and design processes and how these norms might shift as design and manufacturing technologies become more flexible. Through his design and making process, he took note of the many ways AI and humans will become attuned to each other and co-shape each other as part of a long history of people, aesthetics and “norms” being co-shaped by design tools, automation, and means of production.

– Heidi Biggs