If you’re in Milan for the Design Week, don’t miss the ÉCAL Digital Market which is 3D printing everyday items designed by students and established designers to explore how the industry may be disrupted by on-demand mass production.

At Milan design week (taking place now until April 22nd) there are a number of 3D printing projects on display. One such example is a 3D Housing 05, an entirely 3D printed home by acclaimed Italian  architect Massimilano Locatelli.

However, just twelve minutes walk from Locatelli’s display is yet another 3D printed project. Here, students from Swiss university, ÉCAL (Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne), have set up a pop-up factory.

At this factory, the Master Product Design students are using Formlabs Form 2 3D printers to create objects on demand. The objects were modeled by the students and also by designers such as, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Thomas Kral, Sebastian Wrong and Big-Game.

They’re calling the factory the ÉCAL Digital Market. It was set up to explore how manufacturing processes are changing and also to look at how the design industry could be disrupted by on-demand mass production.

“The intention was to work with 3D printers in the scale of mass production… I think that 3D printing has been democratised a lot – but what we wanted was to work on was rapid production… We wanted to focus on having something as large scale as possible, a printing farm to get away from this fascination of 3D technology,” explains Christophe Guberan, the project curator.

3D Printed Souvenir from Milan Design Week

Objects being printed at the ÉCAL Digital Market are practical everyday items. Guberan deliberately asked the designers to come up with objects which are useful.

So, the resulting designs include, a pair of scissors, a comb, a shoe horn, a tape dispenser, a pen and a coat hook. In total, there are 41 functional items. However, as with anything “designer”,  expect to pay high prices for the designs. The comb alone is €17, while a Bouroullec-designed stationary tray can be picked up for €30.

“We asked students and ÉCAL-related designers to propose pieces that could be produced and sold in this space… We wanted to avoid it being a 3D printing performance exhibition, where you have crazy shapes and objects… We didn’t want to focus on being amazed by the production technique but instead on the usability of the objects,” said Guberan.

Although the items are not crazy shapes, many of the items still feature complex details. In order to learn more about 3D printing, the students went to visit Formlabs in Boston. ”You’re not working on a traditional production technique. It’s not plastic insertion or moulding or casting, it’s something that has huge freedom,” Guberan adds.

If you’re in Milan for the Design Week, don’t miss the ÉCAL Digital Market at Spazio Orso 16, on Via dell’Orso, until Sunday 22nd April. However, if you can’t make it to Italy, check out the website as all the files can be purchased online for home printing.

Source: Dezeen