UAU Project is a design studio producing elegant 3D models for functional 3D printing. The team explains their creative process to ALL3DP.
Founded in 2011, UAU Project is a multidisciplinary design studio based in Warsaw, Poland. Led by Justyna Fałdzińska and Miłosz Dąbrowski, two graduates from the Industrial Design Faculty at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, the studio has been exploring and experimenting with “consumer-oriented 3D printing”.
Beautiful objects you can make at home, in other words.
ALL3DP chatted to Fałdzińska and Dąbrowski, about the studio and their work, and talked us through the inspiration and design process for some of their favorite items. All the items discussed below can be found on the dedicated UAU Project page on Cults3D.
About UAU Project
Miłosz Dąbrowski
We have a really small studio, almost a mini start-up or a micro studio. Our main interest right now is 3D printing. We think the people involved in 3D printing at the moment are so great, and we need people making objects which are useful for everyday, and so we have made some really nice designs.
Justyna Fałdzińska
The idea for the studio is to use 3D printing as the core of our work. There are two parts to our designs — some which are only 3D printed, and some which are 3D printed and made using parts which are hard to build otherwise. For example, you can easily get a wooden plank but you can’t easily get a connector. Thankfully, both of us are industrial design graduates and we have backgrounds in this. Now we are into 3D printing and learn as much as we can from it, and want to make 3D printed furniture accessible. We think this will be the future, like there will be whole production. Almost everything. You can be somewhere on the other side of the world and you can have a 3D printer and build a table or anything, meaning you don’t have to order it and wait. You can just download it and print it at your house.
Why do you use 3D printing?
Miłosz Dąbrowski
We got to know the technology during our studies, but back then it was really expensive. It was big companies only — meaning definitely no desktop 3D printers — and it was really expensive to make models. But when the revolution started, we got our Zortrax M200 printer and started 3D printing and we started using it instantly as soon as it was available.
Justyna Fałdzińska
For us it was really nice that you can make a design and put it in the digital form. You don’t have to ship it or have a factory make it, the client is somewhere and they can print it easily. It is amazing technology which helps us to customize everything quickly. The whole process depends on us and how fast we will work and how fast we can deliver objects, which is really cool.
Can you tell us more about consumer-oriented 3D printing?
Miłosz Dąbrowski
Basically, we don’t want to make only obscure stuff which is not useful for anyone else. That is why we want to make consumer-friendly stuff which will mean people are more interested in the technology and will want to use it. At the moment we are not in the next industrial revolution, as it is not yet in every house, but it is close to the beginning. We want to somehow spread the word so people can somehow see the potential for 3D printing. When we go out to some fair with our stuff, people are asking; what can we use it for?
What’s the best thing you’ve ever 3D printed?
Justyna Fałdzińska
I think for me, it was Groww, for sure, as the first one we printed looked really awful but it was working. The idea is really nice as you can plant and you can print it and you can do it. We had the idea and knew how we wanted it to look but the first was really ugly. The second was with the texture and looked really great. In fact, every time Groww prints it is amazing as it the texture is awesome.
In Focus: Endless Candle Holder & Cork Pals
Justyna Fałdzińska
It is one of our newest pieces which we have made and it was also a very fun piece as during the designing process we made a tribute to Memphis group and make something funny and colorful. There are a lot of textures and you can endlessly change it. They make different stuff with a lot of materials and textures.
Miłosz Dąbrowski
There are six parts and each can change place with the other part. You can change the places and change the direction and you can move the elements and design your own candle holder. You don’t even have to use all of the pieces. This was our idea to make it as customizable as possible. You can even print it with your colors. We were playing with everything.
Justyna Fałdzińska
It was a simple design but had a lot of parts, it took some reiteration to make every piece work. First we made only two parts but we would like for more but the pieces didn’t fit, with this it was just a week or two. The designs that we spend most of our time on are the furniture because you have to print and test, and print and test again, and then design and redesign for it to work perfectly for almost every printer. This is the part that takes the longest because this is the important thing — to make it easy to build and easy to print.
Miłosz Dąbrowski
Cork Pals was our first design and also our first popular design three years ago, and we made a few of them for free at the beginning. It’s a set of two parts which make an animal from a cork part.
In Focus: SMF.02
Justyna Fałdzińska
We made self-made furniture last year, and a collection piece was SMG.01. Now we have made the second one which is a coffee table. Some parts are 3D printed and we want to involve people who can download the parts in the making process. They could get the STL files and then make things easily by adding materials they can buy from the market.
Miłosz Dąbrowski
The last one we made is great as we are very fond of natural materials and this is made from plywood and beech wood. We are using only PLA as it is biodegradable. We even hacked the Zortrax printer to make it possible to print with PLA. The table is made with PLA and we added texture to the joints so it looks very nice and different but this piece is great as we tested a few times.
Justyna Fałdzińska
With that design it really works, and you can scale it up or down, and we just gave the measurements that we used on the design you can buy, for the self-made furniture we make instructions booklet in which we propose the dimensions of the parts which you have to buy to make the furniture. We made this small table available, but the ones we made a recent fair were twice as big and also worked. All of our families’ homes are filled with this furniture too.
UAU Project tell us they have has more exciting projects which will be revealed soon. “We have a list of more things to do, but it is very long!”
If you’re curious to learn more, check out the first prints of their ideas on their Instagram, and visit their website for more information.
