Client: COSArchitect: Mamou-Mani ArchitectsLocation: Milan, Italy
Date: 2019-04-15 00:00:00 +0000 UTCTags: Pavilion, 3d printing, additive manufacturing, computation, Bio Plastic
Conifera Milan
We collaborated with Architect Arthur Mamou-Mani on a structure from 700 bioplastic bricks in the courtyard of a 16th-century palazzo, as 2019’s Milan design week installation for fashion brand COS. The designs aims to show how design can harness the potential of renewable materials and sustainable processes. The result is a large-scale structure made up of modular bio-bricks, each 3D-printed in a mixture of polylactic acid – a fully compostable bioplastic that is made using renewable resources – and wood. They are fixed together using PLA cable ties.
The 30-metre-long installation, Conifera, was on show in the courtyard of Palazzo Isimbardi. The team printed the bioplastic bricks over a period of two months using four printers, with each print taking up to seven hours. Each bio-brick is a lattice, taking full advantage of the strength of the material, but also allowing light to permeate through the piece. A particular challenge to engineering was how to deal with a data set of 2 million elements, each of which had sensitive buckling characteristics