Hyperform

Hyperform, the winner of the Next Idea Award at Ars Electronica 2013, was a project done in collaboration with Marcelo Coelho and Formlabs. This project addresses the problem of increasingly small 3D print-volumes by identifying a computational and material folding strategy that could allow large scale objects to be compressed into a minimal volume to maximize the printing capability of desktop 3D printers.
While 3D printers are becoming increasingly accessible and capable of rivaling the quality of professional equipment, they are continually limited by smaller and smaller print volumes. This places severe constraints on the type and scale of objects one can create. Hyperform offers a new design strategy for relocating density from large objects into small, densely packed, volumes that can be printed then reconfigured into large, functional, objects. A chandelier, eight-times the volume of the 5” cubed 3D print, was produced. A fifty-foot linear chain was also produced from this technique showing the extreme size of objects that are now possible by utilizing computational folding and low-cost 3D Printers.