In partnership with the 3D printing company Formlabs, ECAL Master Product Design students present a range of innovative everyday life objects, produced through a print farm within the exhibition and sold directly on site. Projects from ECAL faculty and alumni are also available. The concept was imagined by Camille Blin, head of the Master Product Design, and Christophe Guberan, ECAL tutor. 

ECAL has turned Spazio Orso 16, a 17th century Milanese palazzo, into a contemporary production site and retail shop inspired by a new vision of digital manufacturing. Lately, most of the product design research into 3D printing has been focusing on new technologies and the shapes they can generate. The idea of this project is to present digital manufacturing as an industrial production tool thanks to a print farm composed of numerous machines printing the same pieces simultaneously. “ECAL Digital Market” offers functional and well-designed everyday objects, created by Master Product Design students as well as by a selection of ECAL-related designers (faculty members and alumni).

The project looks into the possibilities of production on demand. It examines the changing environment of manufacturing processes, it emphasizes how fast and transparent today’s design industry could become, and experiments with new design details that are too intricate to achieve with traditional manufacturing techniques.

Finally, “ECAL Digital Market” highlights the role of the designer in this new production cycle. Thanks to the 3D printers and know-how provided by Formlabs, a large variety of objects such as combs, tape dispensers, mechanical pencils, shoehorns, coat hooks, scissors, spinning tops, shelves and many more are produced and sold on site by the students. The digital files of the objects can also be purchased online: www.ecal-digital-market.ch