Philippe Starck Creates 3D Printed Furniture For Everyday Use
Philippe Starck, a famous designer from France who is famous for turning usual items into design ones is going to open a work shop this summer in San Paulo where everybody will be able to print the furniture they like using 3D printers. It’s part of an enterprise, named TOG, which was introduced at the famous Milan furniture design fair in the beginning of April, and which hopefully will change people’s views and attitudes to design.
“We’ve already seen some houses done with 3-D printing,” although they haven’t been bigger than two floors, Mr. Starck told during the fair. “But in a couple of years, we’ll get there.”
These days customers of TOG’s website are able to buy simplified pieces of furniture which they can further customize and redesign altering materials and colours. Customary industrialists that have signed up to TOG’s network can alter and redesign them and send the ready product to the client’s home. According to Mr Starck this concept will take steps further with 3D printing technologies.
As a technology becomes available for the majority of people, which is likely to happen in the nearest future, TOG will immediately become an open source web-site available for almost all users. After that people will have a larger choice of furniture and not just what is offered in shopping centers. Mr. Starck dreams of the future when almost everywhere there are 3D printing kiosks where everybody can 3D print anything he/she wants. There they will mix various designs to get something to their liking. Hopefully this tendency will point to people’s individualities. But this will take some time to come true.
As we know, to get something 3D printed, the special software slices the digital image of an object into numerous layers, the data is then transferred to a 3D printer. It creates a 3D object layer by layer from various materials – metal, plastic or others. To make the technology more widespread, it needs to become quicker and cheaper that the usual technologies used for producing various items. As the technology develops, it will be possible to reduce transportation costs.