The First 3D Printed Room is This Summer's Baroque Reality

Images Source: Co.Design.

Designers are turning 3D printing to the service of architecture. Co.Design reports on the curious Baroque prototype which immediately recalls H. R. Giger's work:

Architects Michael Hansmeyer and Benjamin Dillenburger designed a Baroque room with 80 million surfaces. ... Hansmeyer, who is known for using algorithms and computation to generate incredibly complex architecture, is finally ready to build (print) it. This summer, Hansmeyer, in collaboration with project partner Benjamin Dillenburger, will assemble a fully enclosed architectural folly whose highly wrought parts will all be 3-D printed.

Hansmeyer and Dillenburger recently previewed a 1:3 scale prototype of the room at the Materializing Exhibition in Tokyo and Basel’s Swiss Art Awards. The design of the spaces, which blend intricately detailed columns with other finely sculptural and nonstructural elements, can be described as Baroque on steroids.

Digital Grotesque represents a major development for Hansmeyer, who describes his designs as “computational architecture.” His previous series of cardboard and Styrofoam columns all included forms that he defined using algorithmic processes. As he told Co.Design in 2011, “Every 3-D printing facility we spoke to turned us down." The printers, evidently, couldn’t handle the complexity of the columns, with their 16 million polygonal faces.

Well, that was then. This time, Hansmeyer found a printer that could articulate the Giger-esque surrealist forms. In total, the room has 80 million surfaces that will be rendered in smooth sandstone. Like the prototype, the parts will be glazed and gilded, a nod to the design’s Baroque influences.

Despite the extravagant, mind-addling details, Hansmeyer and Dillenburger insist that the forms are generated using a “reduced, minimalist” protocol. They write:

“Inspired by the natural process of cell division, we develop an algorithm that iteratively divides and transforms the initial geometry of a simple cube. Despite simple rules, a complex world of forms arises at multiple scales.”

The designers say that the printed room will navigate between “ornament and structure,” making it, very literally, a digital grotesque. The full-scale installation opens July 22.

The forms are printed, then sanded, glazed and gilded.

"The model as printed out of sandstone using a high-resolution 3-D printer."