Dutch Design Week 2011: components for this furniture by Rotterdam designers Minale-Maeda can be downloaded, 3D-printed and assembled locally.
Consumers can download the blueprints for each piece and alter the dimensions to suit.
The required connecting components could be 3D-printed locally and the sheet materials cut to size at a hardware store.
Each piece is designed for simple assembly and to explicitly display its construction.
Minale-Maeda aim to give consumers more control and reduce energy expended in transporting whole items of furniture.
The project is on show at After the Bit-rush: Design in a Post Digital Age curated by Eindhoven cultural institute MU, who also commissioned the Temporary Trees in our earlier story.
Dutch Design Week continues until 30 October. See all our stories about the event in our special category.
Here are some more details from the designers:
Designed specifically to be downloadable in order to reduce environmental issues related to transport, costs of stock keeping and explore collaborative design and distribution, this furniture can be edited in size and materials, is made on location or can be self-made by downloading the blueprints. The concept was to turn the pieces inside out to make construction simple, while brackets and structural details become distinctive and attractive features. The connections are 3d printed to suit various sizes of wood, and the crafting is minimal requiring only cutting to length and drilling.
Material: wood, polyamide
Gerrit Rietveld without the screws, nails and glue, that's all…
Totally Reitveld.
ken isaacs legacy…
I think you've drawn attention to your ignorance with your comment.
is the polyamide recyclable? who has the 3D printers? is the wood from a sustainable source, if not what other materials could be used that are sustainable?
They say you can download it. So where would that be? Nice story, but be true to your statement.
3d printer is just a tool. not a reason for design.
how are the elements actually fixed? at the exhibition the 3d printed elements seemed to be only decorative (just hanging on the wood).
From my humble experience, people who are willing to go the extra mile and make furniture themselves are either woodworkers who love the craft (which is being suppressed here), designers who love to design themselves (which has been already done for you here), or poor (in which case they will make furniture out of found objects, not download it on their mac-books and launch 3d prints on the home z-corp).
Although the idea of open-source design is very interesting and full of potential, I think this project is most satisfying to their authors, but is very unclear as to its customer base and societal location.
I see it as an experiment otherwise it far cheaper to get a hand plane, a saw, a thickenesser and a screwdriver than a 3d printer. Also, who would want such ugly impersonal furniture?
Is there a wood connected to each other?
Polyamide get together and I think it's a wood.
Does somebody knows more?