3D printing being apt for making toys, spare parts, and chess pieces – this thought now belongs to the old school. Thanks to artists like Joris Laarman and several others, who are adamant about changing this mindset.

The use of 3D printing can be extensively seen in the works of Laarman who is a world renowned artist. His work is currently on display at the Friedman Benda gallery in New York City. This exhibition is special because it showcases a bench and chair that have been 3D printed with the help of Laarman’s MX3D printer (MX3D-Metal). This exhibition has four sections: Maker, Micro Structures, Vortex, and Spiro graphic.

The Maker section has the Maker chairs which is an assemblage of parametric parts that is either CNC-milled or 3D-printed so that they fit together like a puzzle or a jigsaw. The pieces are hexagonal, pixilated, or triangular in shape. The Maker chair is a 3D printed chair that was designed using a new technology known as ‘crowdsourcing’. It is also crowned as the first ‘crowd fabricated’ chair that was ever designed. The designers are not keeping the designs to themselves, they are offering access to the 3D files for one of the chairs as a supplement to the Maker series. Earlier the chair has 202 components but with the recent modification it now has 77 components and it can be fabricated in 10days with an investment of $30 on materials.

Once the jigsaw pieces are assembled, a real standardized chair is formed.