From Control to Uncertainty in 3D Printing with Clay

Abstract

The use of digital fabrication tools can extend beyond the seamless materialization of the digital model and can continuously inform design ideation through emerging material qualities. Exploring the implications of an approach to digital fabrication that is not based on imposed and rigorous formalisms but on unique and contextual ones constitutes the research agenda. Within this framework, the focus of this paper is on 3D printing with clay. Considering matter not as the static and passive outcome of digitally predetermined form, but as a design generator, a case study on both the materials and tools employed in 3D printing with clay is presented.