Wright Auction

In 1992 it was rare to find computer literate machines capable of translating architectural drawings into three-dimensional forms with compound curves. The bed for the D’Alba’s master bedroom was originally conceived as a hand-carved cast-aluminum design. Concurrent with the D’Alba Residence Project, Jordan Mozer Associates (JMA) was commissioned to create a restaurant in the new Messeturm, Europe’s tallest building in Frankfurt, Germany. There, JMA met Karl Wesch, a millworker with brand-new state-of-the-art five-axis CAD-CAM (computer automated drawings/computer automated machine) wood-milling machine. JMA produced fifteen expressionist cabinets with truncated hyperbolic paraboloid forms with Wesch. Excited by the possibilities of translating gestural sketches into three-dimensional objects with automated equipment, JMA established a relationship with John Shepard of PIW, a Chicago metal fabrication concern with comparable CAD-CAM metal milling equipment to create the D’Alba bed.