Digital Grotesque

We love how there is always a next level to everything. Recently we mentioned the fascinating use of 3D printing technology in the context of food, the designers of the aptly named Digital Grotesque astoundingly so have taken the technology and went way beyond most known earlier usage. The project was shown on a 1:3 scale at the Swiss Art Awards 2013 and will be fully launched early september. It features a fully-enclosed room, made using digital 3D printing techniques, with a mind bending eighty million surfaces which are totally gilded.

The designers of the project, Michael Hansmeyer and Benjamin Dillenburger, are of the opinion that architectural elements of digital tectonics are microscopic: algorithms articulate millions of surfaces into forms, and printers now bind millions of grains of sand to stone. In Digital Grotesque Hansmeyer and Dillenburger explore the new potentials of digital design using a reduced, minimalist approach that nonetheless transcends rationality.

Inspired by the natural process of cell division, they have developed an algorithm that iteratively divides and transforms the initial geometry of a simple cube. Despite simple rules, a complex world of forms arises at multiple scales: between ornament and structure, between order and chaos, foreign and yet familiar. A process which rightfully so carries the name Digital Grotesque. The result is a room which makes one think of the extravagant aesthetic of the Baroque and at the same time an organic science fiction room from a universe like the one of the Alien franchise.