background graphic generated with Circulizer

Ziggy Starfish  ◌  Spring 2013

In collaboration with:
Vincent Krause and William Sedig

Ziggy Starfish is a sheet metal assembly which explores CAD/CAM techniques and in particular CNC plasma cutting tools.

First Prototype

The Ziggy team took a stance that the contingencies of the machine, material, and time constraints should strictly govern the design.


A series of paper models led to a unit that aggregated into multiple regular polyhedra, from which we selected the icosidodecahedron for fabrication. The regular geometry allowed us to simply scale the model to best fit the available material size, which ultimately dictated the size of the mockup.

Furthermore, the fabrication process was given over to the machine to a great extent. Hole-sizes for hardware, for example, were indicated on the .dxf cut file as a single point, which ensured that the CNC Plasma Cutter’s tolerance would decide their size and therefore the size of the hardware. The final orientation of the object was left to chance as we were delighted to discover that the material distribution allowed us to balance the mockup on one side. A less planned design approach was somewhat foreign to the team members, but the resulting workflow was extremely smooth.

Final Mockup
Exhibited at ACADIA in October 2013