Dutch design firm Joris Laarman Lab is subject of an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Joris Laarman Lab will take over the Smithsonian’s Upper East Side satellite museum, Cooper Hewitt, for the next three months. Called Design in the Digital Age, the show explores the design studio’s naturalistic fabrications. Delving into the processes behind them, it will be the first major US showing of the artist and eponymous studio.

Headed by artist Joris Laarman himself, the studio specializes in artistic furniture concepts and installations. One noteworthy piece might be familiar to regular readers of All3DP — MX3D’s 3D printed steel bridge over a canal in Amsterdam.

Design in the Digital Age

Laarman has been on the museum’s radar for some time. “Since Cooper Hewitt first acquired Joris design school thesis project, the Heat Wave Radiator, we have keenly watched him build a body of work that abolishes traditional distinctions between the natural and machine-made, decorative and functional, and points toward an exciting new future for design,” explains Caroline Baumann, Director of Cooper Hewitt.

With works in the permanent collections of the NY MoMA, Centre Pompidou and V&A Museum, London, Laarman’s works are no small thing. Indeed, getting us all hot and bothered for the exhibition is an example that does a double whammy. Dragon is both an aesthetically pleasing 3D printed work and forges a new path for the tech.

Using the in-house built MX3D robotic arm 3D printer to create it, Dragon demonstrated the feasibility of complex, self-supporting objects. Such was the system’s versatility, the Dragon would go on to lay the technological groundwork for the Amsterdam bridge.

In addition to Dragon, catching our eye is the Digital Matter series. This collection of nickel-plated neodymium voxel tables look like raw, digital designs come to life.

Baumann adds “This exhibition will be a stimulating journey of discovery that will delve deeply into Joris conceptual thinking and collaborative approach to design, as well as his embrace of experimentation to fuel his creative process”.

Source: Forbes