Printing chairs

3D printing is the buzzword of the moment, but London-based architect and designer Daniel Widrig has gone one step further by creating a 3D-printed chair made from sugar, Japanese rice wine and plaster.

The Degenerate Chair was created using techniques usually reserved for designing digital maquettes for computer games and movies. Its structure is built up of millions of three-dimensional pixels (voxels) which are baked into one high-resolution skin.

The geometry was then put through a low-cost 3D printer, which bound the layers of sugar, sake and plaster mixture together, allowing Widrig to avoid the usual high costs and lengthy time processes involved in 3D printing.

The furniture is part of a set of experimental seating objects launched at the FRAC Center’s Naturalizing Architecture exhibition in Orleans, France.

(FRAC stands for Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain – Regional Contemporary Art Fund – a decentralised cultural body established in each of France’s regions in the 1980s.)

Additional 3D-printed chairs currently attracting attention include the Chairgenics model by FormNation, which is on display at The Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.

Designer Eric Klarenbeek’s 3Dprinted Mycelium Chair, made of fungus, also hit the headlines when it was released towards the end of 2013.

The Degenerate Chair will be on display at the centre until March 30. – AFP Relaxnews