Art and blobs

the advent of 3D printers elevates the possible shapes that can easily be manufactured. This has the potential to combine with the growing taste for organic architecture, the work of such architects and designers such as Future Systems [now sadly defunct], Asymptote, Ross Lovegrove etc. We have traditionally relied on rigid cartesian straight lines and right angles, because they are easiest to manufacture and to work with. As soon as you introduce a non-level surface or an angle other than 90 degrees any work rapidly becomes incredibly difficult. Not only do you need to custom fit every piece of material, it is no longer as simple as running a plane over a piece of wood to take a mil off of it.

This taste for straight lines and right angles is not born out of any innate compatibility with human kind. We are not inherently straight or right angled, our reach does not extent across the full limit of a rectangular desk. Where space and ergonomics are of pressing concern, for example in aeroplane cockpits or car interiors, things are moulded and crafted, curved and tactile. Our furniture is starting to become more akin to the seats in cars. And why should it not. What is so different about sitting in a car, from sitting on a sofa.

We are perhaps on the point of tipping over from a world of straight lines and right angles, where a material can easily cover a regular shape, to a world where furniture is shaped into organic blobs made from material that slowly evaporates, or degrades, the way the fresh aluminium will automatically anodise in air. A world where furniture melds into building into function into lifestyle. Where we are surrounded by multifunctional surfaces, kitchen worktops that can equally be screens or heating elements or lights, changing colour with a couple of gestures. A world where you can sit on anything, or pinch and pull to make it into a hard working surface.