Lionel Theodore Dean: FutureFactories

From FutureFeeder: Computer-controlled Rapid Prototyping is old news in the industrial design world, but recently designers have been realizing the full potential of the technology by using it in new ways.

The FutureFactories research project at the University of Huddersfield has designer Lionel Theodore Dean and colleagues using laser sintering techniques to create parametically designed objects that mutate within a set of constraints. Since the production technique always produces one-offs anyway, why not make every object unique?

The Autonomatic symposium at the University of Falmouth in January 2005 discussed the use of such techniques, as well as the implications of computer-controlled techniques on craft traditions like jewelry design. Is craft defined by the involvement of human hands in the production of a piece, or can it include computer-aided dynamic generative designs executed by machines? The papers from the symposium are available for reading in PDF format.

Other designers using Rapid Prototyping in new ways include materialize.MGX. One of their contributing designers, Batsheba Grossman, has long been producing sculptures based on mathematical formulae using the same techniques.