Creative Solutions writes:
The Voxel Chair was designed by London-based designers Manuel Jiménez Garcia and Gilles Retsin from the Design Computation Lab of the Bartlett School of Architecture, using a new technique called air printing. This is being touted as a means to make 3D printing simpler, cheaper and quicker.
A Voxel is a 3D equivalent of a pixel and is used in fields like medical imaging and games, so the name reflects the chair’s digital nature. The design is based on the S-shaped Panton Chair, a modernist classic from 1967, which was the first chair to be moulded from plastic.
The Voxel Chair, however, wasn’t moulded, and where the Panton is a solid surface, this is a complex web of hollows. That’s because, instead of being built up in layers as in standard 3D printing, the air printing technique uses a continuous line of material, which is woven into shape. This can be thought of as like extruding a line of glue from a glue gun — but the line used to create the Voxel Chair was an unbroken 2.36 Km.
And the Voxel Chair is cutting edge in more ways than one. Amid concerns about the mineral resources being used to create plastics that pile up in landfills, this is non-toxic, biodegradable plastic made from renewable sources such as corn-starch.
(Image removed)Embracing new tools
The creators of the chair have high expectations for their air printing technique. “Large-scale printing is usually slow and costs a lot of money,” explains Gilles Retsin. “This is only the prototype and it was printed in a day. There are many ways we can optimise that process.”
If air printing proves to be everything its creators claim, it could revolutionise design and engineering. It could allow architects and designers, as well as industries like automobiles and aerospace, far more control and capacity for innovation, as well as the ability to design large-scale metamaterials more easily — and all quickly and cheaply.
The Voxel Chair was built by a robot and printed in air, so does it mark the end of the designer? Not at all. Whatever the tools used, the human mind and imagination will still be needed for the foreseeable future. At Creative Solutions, we’ve always embraced new tools that help us realise our design concepts better.
If air printing does become as successful and affordable as claimed, perhaps we’ll end up with a robot on the payroll.
(Image removed)You’re reading this because you want something designed. But actually, you want more than that.
You want an agency that’s engaged enough to understand your objectives, experienced enough to turn them into a reality, and creative enough to leave you thrilled with the results. You’ve just found us.
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