OnSite is a parametric design system transforming industrial pipes into sculptural public furniture. Conceived in Brussels in the early 2000s, the project explored adaptability, digital fabrication, and user participation — anticipating today’s culture of parametric design and 3D printing.
OnSite is a design system that reimagines public furniture as both infrastructure and cultural landmark.
The first prototype, OS.01, was conceived for the 50th anniversary of the North–South railway connection in Brussels. The project draws on the paradox of the “Jonction”: while designed to connect the city, it also introduced a lasting fracture. Situated at the symbolic Gare de la Chapelle, the piece engages directly with this unresolved urban divide.
Plastic pipes — normally hidden underground as conduits for water, electricity, gas, and data — are transformed into structural, sculptural elements. Corrugated for flexibility and strength, they celebrate the invisible networks that sustain the city while shaping a new form of collective space.
The system combines custom CNC-cut metal frames with mass-produced pipes, requiring no molds and allowing site-specific variations. Using computational design and digital fabrication, each piece can adapt to context and function: sitting, leaning, gathering, reclining. Profiles are interpolated into fluid geometries — a “programming of furniture” that generates continuous, non-standard forms.
From early prototypes to later iterations such as OS.03 with Mediaruimte Brussels — which introduced interactive design tools for public participation — OnSite anticipated today’s parametric and additive design cultures. What was once a vision of adaptable, user-driven, digitally fabricated furniture has become a practical reality.
An introduction into the OnSite project
The OS.01 prototype was conceived as a proposal to create an artistic landmark marking the 50th anniversary of the North–South railway connection in Brussels — a key element in the modernization of the city center, both underground and above ground.
The name of the competition project, "Jonction", refers to a paradox: while the urban intervention aimed to connect the two parts of the city — and by extension, the country and its people — drawing a line between two points inevitably also creates a division.
It is within this context that the urban and cultural center Recyclart emerged in the neighborhood surrounding Gare de la Chapelle, occupying a symbolic position within the unresolved fracture between north and south Brussels.
As a starting point, underground urban networks can be understood as the vital arteries of a complex system of flows that traverse and sustain the city — not only mobility, but also water, electricity, gas, data, and the regulation of urban infrastructure. The plastic pipes used in the Onsite project become, in this sense, a celebration of the city and its multiple channels.
By transforming these pipes into a piece of public furniture that brings people together, the project operates on the thin line between connection and separation — echoing the paradox at the heart of urban infrastructure.
A second vector relates to the use of computational design and digital fabrication tools. At the time the project was developed, a new digital architectural culture was emerging — driven by pioneering practices such as NOX (Lars Spuybroek), dECOi, UNStudio, and Foreign Office Architects, among others.
One of the central topics in the design discourse of the early 2000s was the notion of the non-standard — a paradigm shift away from repetition and modularity, toward continuous variation, customization, and the integration of form-generation with material logic and fabrication processes (see Bernard Cache, Greg Lynn, Kolarevic).
The Onsite proposal was thus conceived as a system capable of generating site-specific and customized variations, in direct response to the surrounding context and the needs of a given location or commission. In this sense, the project emerged from a design process shaped by both environmental parameters and computational logic, where form arises through adaptation rather than repetition.
As a result, the use of custom CNC laser-cut metal frames, combined with corrugated plastic pipes, offered a fabrication solution that required no molds and enabled adaptable, site-specific configurations.
The corrugated structure of the pipes gives the material two key properties: it can be bent along its length, and it is structurally strong under compression. These characteristics — combined with its light weight, its flexible nature, and the fact that it is an industrially mass-produced material — made it ideal for the project’s goals of adaptability, accessibility, and rapid deployment.
Regarding the design system developed within the Onsite project — what I referred to as the "programming of furniture" — a collection of typological profiles (a kind of functional alphabet) was used to define potential uses. Each profile corresponded to a specific spatial gesture or mode of occupation (sitting, leaning, reclining, gathering, etc.).
These profiles were then arranged along a guiding line and subjected to interpolation — or morphing — allowing the form to transition fluidly from one use to another, and translated through the piped fluid geometry that defines the project’s visual and structural language.
The OS.03 project, developed at Mediaruimte in Brussels, introduced an interactive graphic interface — a touchscreen on which visitors could draw piped profiles and generate variations of the system in real time. This participatory approach offered an early exploration of how users could engage with and shape design through digital means.
Today, tools such as Grasshopper and other parametric or procedural design platforms make it possible to quickly adapt and evolve forms based on input or context. Likewise, additive manufacturing technologies like 3D printing allow these digital models to be physically realized with increasing ease and precision.
What was once imagined as an ideal — a fully adaptable, user-driven, and digitally fabricated design process — is now becoming a tangible and practical reality.
Project Name | Description |
|---|---|
OS.01 is the first iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Conceived for the “Jonction” competition in Brussels, it proposed an artistic landmark for the 50th anniversary of the North–South railway connection, in connection with Recyclart. | |
OS.02 is the second iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Inspired by Marseille, it was presented at BJECM in Naples and later at Salone Satellite in Milan, with support from Les Mécènes du Sud. | |
OS.03 is the third iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Developed during a residency at Mediaruimte in Brussels with LAb[au], it introduced OSIG, a digital tool for generating tubular profiles in real time. | |
OS.04 is the fourth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Developed as a private commission, it explores fluid transitions between sitting, resting, and eating. | |
OS.05 is the fifth iteration of the Onsite programmatic furniture concept. Designed and produced in the context of the Brazil/Brazil exhibition at La Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille | |
OS.07 is the seventh iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Presented at the Instant exhibition by Designed in Brussels at Galerie Ravenstein, the installation featured illuminated pipes in a dark space, combining seating, meeting, and ambient light. | |
OS.08 is the eighth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Commissioned for Tokyo Eat at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the bench was produced with Recyclart and later exhibited in Berlin, Milan, and Brussels. | |
OS.09 is the ninth iteration of the Onsite public seating concept. First commissioned for Paris Première Vision and reinstalled at Le Centquatre, Paris. | |
OS.10 is the tenth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Presented at Into Art and Furniture in Berlin during the Designmai festival, it explored modular metal structures adaptable to different contexts. | |
OS.11 is the eleventh iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Commissioned for the Communiquer Group in Lyon, it combines a reception desk and a waiting bench into one hybrid structure, supported by Georges Verny Caron. | |
OS.12 turned a DJ booth into a spatial installation at Bed Supperclub, Bangkok, where tubular forms suggested dystopian surveillance as a political metaphor. | |
OS.13 is an unbuilt proposal for an exhibition stand. Extending the Onsite system to scenography, it illustrates the broader potential of the series. | |
OS.14 is the fourteenth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Commissioned for TodaysArt in The Hague, it featured a glass serre lounge with tentacle lighting, seating, and DJ booth, built for reuse. | |
OS.14.02 is the Berlin iteration of the Onsite lounge. Presented at CTM Festival in Club Maria, it combined seating, DJ booth, and luminous tubular forms adapted from the TodaysArt version. | |
OS.15 is the fifteenth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Presented at Hangar J1 in Marseille for the 2013 European Capital of Culture, it transformed the vast industrial hall into a furniture-landscape for gathering and interaction. | |
OS.16 is the sixteenth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Commissioned for Vodafone’s offices in Maastricht, it merges seating and visual signage, turning the reception into both a functional bench and a symbolic marker. | |
OS.17 is the seventeenth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Commissioned for Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, it adapts the system’s seating profiles to the park’s architectural identity. | |
OS.18 is the eighteenth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Developed for Design City Luxembourg, it proposed low-cost urban objects in seating and partition functions spread across the city. | |
OS.19 is the nineteenth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Commissioned for Strelka Bar in Moscow, it was produced locally from digital files and standard TPC tubing, showing how the system adapts through distributed fabrication and site-specific integration. | |
OS.20 is the twentieth iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Presented at Den Frie in Copenhagen, it occupied the gallery as a modular, flexible organism inviting public use. | |
OS.21 is the twenty-first iteration of the Onsite furniture concept. Designed with Wieden+Kennedy for Honda at the IAA Frankfurt Motor Show 2011, it transformed the stand into a landscape of colored energy flows, combining seating, scenography, and an information desk. |
