Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards: Where is the 3D Printing Revolution in Design?
Despite its creative possibilities and sustainable credentials, 3D printing is still regarded as niche among the design community. But for how much longer?
Last week, I was fortunate enough to visit the ‘Science Fiction Design’ exhibition at the Vitra Design museum in Weil am Rhein.
Among the futuristic products of Verner Panton, Eero Saarinen and Joe Colombo was a chair of very squiggly proportions.
As it turns out, the chair, entitled Materialized Sketch, was one of the world’s first 3D printed chairs, the result of an experiment to directly translate a sketch into a physical reality.
Although this might have been pretty revolutionary stuff when released back in 2005, 3D printing has since become woven into the fabric of industrial design, especially with regards to prototyping, mould making and temporary parts.
However, I find it interesting that designers and design manufacturers aren't exactly rushing to develop products with the medium of 3D printing.
The obvious question, then, is this: Given the unique formal possibilities of 3D printing, not to mention its eco-friendly advantages, why isn’t 3D printing being more readily adopted in the world of furniture and lighting design?
Seeing 3D printing in a historical context
New technologies have continually reframed the creative boundaries of designers.
Steam-bending woodworking techniques in the 19th Century brought us a new era of coffee house chair (Thonet).
Injection moulded plastics in the 20th Century brought us an entirely new kind of design (Eames).
And now, it seems, designers experimenting with 3D printers are bringing an entirely new visual typology to design.
In addition to the squiggly chair, other chair designers have started to embrace the medium as a tool to produce products.
New Raw’s Ermis Chair, for example, is perhaps the perfect poster child for the possibilities of 3D printing technology.
The chair is made from PLA, a bioplastic material derived from renewable resources like cornstarch or sugarcane.
And thanks to advances in the size of 3D printers, the Ermis chair can be printed entirely as one piece. This in itself is something of a technological game changer for designers, who can now print a chair without the need for building a chair with adhesives or joints.
But examples of 3D printed products like this are thin on the ground.
Contemporary design has, up until now, largely steered clear of the complex formal possibilities offered by 3D printing.
If we’re honest, they’re still regarded as novelties - novelties which serve as excellent clickbait on online platforms such as Dezeen.
At the very most, designers such as Anderssen & Voll are choosing to selectively use 3D printing as part of their prototyping process. But only very few have truly embraced the medium’s creative possibilities.
Embracing the 3D printed ‘aesthetic’
3D printed materials have a different charm to traditional materials such as wood, metal or dirty old plastic.
But this shouldn’t make them any less appealing (Surely?).
Although largely shunned by mainstream design manufacturers, there are, in fact, numerous examples of manufacturers who have successfully embraced the distinctive additive layering aesthetic of 3D printing into their products.
Gantri and Polyluma are two lighting brands which have built their product catalogue around this. Both have woven the distinctive 3D printing aesthetic into the core of their design language.
Architectural companies such as Studio RAP are even harnessing 3D printing’s layered aesthetic to create unique building facades.
With the example of the 3D printed ceramic facade in Amsterdam's Hooftstraat shopping district, each ceramic tile was designed and individually 3D-printed to echo the details of textile.
When done right, these examples prove that the aesthetic of 3D printing is an interesting alternative to traditional design approaches.
3D Printing as a genuinely sustainable medium
Surely in an age where manufacturers are (rightly) obsessed with becoming sustainable, we’d expect more designers to be zeroing into the possibilities of sustainable 3D printing?
After all, one of the key advantages of 3D printing is its ability to repurpose recycled plastics, metals and other materials for filaments.
For example, Dirk van der Kooij’s Chubby chair is printed using 10kg of recycled fridge interiors, smelted into a delicious looking printing filament.
With filaments for 3D printing able to be created from all kinds of bio-based PLA materials, from natural resources such as cornstarch to hemp fibre derivatives, the palette of genuinely sustainable material options is refreshing.
3D printing manufacturer Prusa Research even recently created a new line of 3D printing materials using recycled materials and pigments from food and pharma byproducts. Risotto cream is one of their most successful material and colour options to date.
Given the huge barriers to entry for genuine sustainable practices, from sourcing costly sustainable supply chains to circular materials, the possibilities of printing with these bio filaments suddenly look very appealing.
Conclusion
Those who have embraced 3D printing technology are proving that it’s possible to create unique products which also pave the way for a more sustainable future in design.
But realistically, until consumers are forced to change their consumption habits, there isn't a great deal of incentive for manufacturers to start adopting 3D printing en masse.
Given the significant start-up costs associated with purchasing 3D printers, not to mention the production bottlenecks which can arise from printing schedules, manufacturers will likely continue to refine and develop traditional manufacturing processes for as long as possible before 3D printing becomes a viable option.
Only when the ecological crisis heats up to the extent that alternatives such as 3D printing aren't just a novelty - but also a necessity - can we expect to see more manufacturers adding 3D printed chairs, tables and lights to their product catalogues.