In the urban context, the flux of people constantly redefines public space throughout the day. How can digital fabrication address this impermanence? What if public space could identify the sitting and lounging needs of pedestrians throughout the day to provide instant furniture? A train station platform or an airport terminal, for example, can be empty during rush hours to allow for free-flowing human traffic. However, it should be filled with seating during delays, provide adequate furnishings for conversations and meals in the evening, and lounging beds for overnight connections. “Instant lounge” can formally engage these daily scenarios without waste.

Conventionally, digital fabrication is used both as a desktop feature that facilitates rapid prototyping, and in much larger settings, such as workshops and factories, to construct permanent parts of buildings, cars, machinery, etc. The concept of quickly testing ideas embedded in the former, and that of inhabitation in the latter, are divorced in this dichotomy of scales. “Instant lounge” is a reconciliation of the two, wherein impermanence plays a key role. Deployed in the public space to make temporary furniture configurations, the machine responds to the ever-changing conditions created by dynamic dwelling hence making evolving spatial concepts instantly inhabitable.

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