Digital, Physical And Compostable

Since 2012, fashion brand COS has made its presence felt at Milan Design Week’s Fuorisalone with Instagram-worthy projects designed in collaboration with big names (nendo, Snarkitecture and Sou Fujimoto, to name a few). The brand returned this year with Conifera, a large-scale architectural installation made from renewable resources using 3D-printing technology.

Located at Palazzo Isimbardi and designed by London-based French architect Arthur Mamou-Mani and his eponymous studio, Conifera was digitally designed and fabricated using 3D-printing. It consisted of seven hundred interlocking modular bio-bricks. The aim was to produce one of the largest structures to date using this construction method.

Wood and bioplastic composite lattices created a sculptural pathway leading from Palazzo Isimbardi’s central courtyard to its garden. The design was inspired by patterns within the architecture of the palazzo, and in particular, by the motif of the square. Each biobrick was made from fully compostable resources. The interlocking structural lattices optimised material use and allowed light to permeate the structure.

Said Mamou-Mani: “Conifera blends the digital with the physical world while addressing sustainability through the use of compostable bioplastic, produced and 3D printed locally. It is a dialogue between technology and craft, between the manmade and the natural, and between monumentality and lightness.” He described the installation as “futuristic high-tech” but also “deeply poetic and human”.

As visitors journeyed through the installation, the scene shifted as the architecture of wood and bioplastic composite in the courtyard changed into a translucent and white bioplastic one in the palazzo’s garden, communicating a digitally fabricated bridge between the human-made and the natural world. The project integrated design and construction through a dialogue with robotics, with the architect as both designer and maker.

“I wanted the design to echo the circular nature of the compostable material and create a journey from architecture to nature in order to showcase how renewable materials, coupled with an algorithmic approach and distributed 3D printing, can create the building blocks of the future,” said Mamou-Mani. Photo courtesy of COS.