London – Traditional craft skills and future-facing digital technologies come together in a new travelling exhibition by the Crafts Council. The show, Lab Craft, features 26 designers, artists and makers who use digital technologies such as rapid prototyping, laser cutting, laser scanning and digital printing to craft a new path for contemporary design.
Assa Ashuach, a furniture and product designer who encourages customers to personalise everyday objects using open-sourced designs online, presents the Assa Table Loop Light, a polyamide piece modified by a user of his UCODO co-designing software.
Meanwhile, Zachary Eastwood-Bloom’s Information Ate My Table demonstrates how, as the designer puts it, ‘a table becomes dysfunctional through digital interference’, and the Bravais Armchair by Liam Hopkins at Lazerian uses computer-aided design to translate natural inspiration into a stunning structural form.
Like the recent Mechanical Couture exhibition that explores the role of mechanisation in haute couture, Lab Craft traces a model for the future of craft.