On their "Print Farm", designers Rael San Fratello use 3D manufacturing to make just & beautiful futures

Thanking Aeon for the tip, we found these amazing designer/architects Rael San Fratello, who have built what they called a “print farm” - a space where they experiment with 3D manufacturing and printing - in Northern California. As Aeon puts it, they’re moving the technology beyond plastics:

They instead use a wide array of recycled and organic materials – everything from car tyres and sawdust to grape skins and coffee grounds. Via experimentation with such novel substances, the duo aims not only to create more sustainable approaches to 3D printing, but to brainstorm innovative solutions to pressing societal problems too.

This video from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York takes viewers inside Rael San Fratello’s ‘print farm’ in Northern California, and spotlights two of their most promising initiatives – a project to support coral reef restoration via protective clay ‘coral seeding units’, and a prototype cabin built from ceramic and sawdust tiles to help solve California’s affordable housing crisis.

It’s a great watch. From our interest in cosmo-localism, both as a culture and a mode of production, we are tracking all forms of 3D manufacture (the COVID crisis flared up its potential). But of course, it’s only one part of a planet-friendly manufacturing model - which includes repairable/modular, rather than unfixable and disposable products and services (which a 3D manufacture would be set to make parts for).

Yet all hail to Rael San Fratello for doing what artists often do - occupying the future early. (They have a dedicated site, Emerging Objects, which handles their growing 3D business.)

You may wish to cheer Rael San Fratello further - as it turns out they were also responsible for those wondrous pink see-saws that were threaded through one section of Donald Trump’s border wall (see video at bottom). They’ve written a compendious book of ideas, Borderwall As Architecture, about how artists and designers can transcend these kinds of walls, by interventions of various kinds.