When I was a small child (nearly 30 years ago), we went to Kashmir on vacation and we saw a lot of wonderful and the thing that is still with me is a set of 6 chairs and 3 tables.

The unique thing about them is that they were all handcrafted in wood and that made that the back rests of none of the chairs has the same carving: every backrest is different even front and back! In this day and age nobody would even bother going through so much labour! This makes them so special as opposed to the homogeneously designed chairs you get now.

I think 3d printing will bring back part of that uniqueness. You will be able to make generative designs that will turn out different every time based on randomised parameters. A few examples…

Imagine the magnificent dresses of Iris Van Herpen with complex build structures. Now imagine a dress where the elements would change size and shape based on the shape and build of the person who will wear them… This could be parametrised into the 3d model… So create once and make many different. And all that with a spinge of randomness so that every dress looks slightly different regardless of the build as well.

Another example would be a house that would change the outer shape of the building based on the internal layout of the rooms: intelligently placing the rooftop based on where the living room is, so you have the highest part of the house in te living room… And now add beams from the living room to the center of every room and your house looks totally different from your neighbours’ houses even though the whole suburb is based on one parametrised model…

Other examples are ample in areas like watches, jewellery and prosthetics. Imagine a chandelier full of glass flowers, with each flower having a slight variation of the petal formation and a slight variation of color…

If you are doing things like this, please leave a comment with your work, so we can all get inspired…