Design Museum's 3D printing factory teaches how 3D printing works

Aug.11, 2013

The future is here. London Design Museum's latest exhibition, "The Future Is Here: A New Industrial Revolution" looks at what drives innovation and new manufacturing techniques, how these can lead to increased growth and productivity and how they will change your future.

The Design Museum is collaborating with the UK's innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, to bring this new exhibition to show what new manufacturing techniques mean for all of us.

A 'first-of-its-kind' factory is open to show visitors how 3D printing works, with a live demonstration so exhibition visitors can experience it first-hand. Technicians from the museum produce various objects and projects for visitors to pick up and assemble. The Factory has also a gallery space where products made during the exhibition are be displayed.

There are also opportunities to find out how the boundaries between designer, manufacturer and consumer are disappearing, with a growing movement of 'hacktivists', who share and download digital designs online so they can be customized for new uses.

Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic says this exhibition is a landmark one. 'Two hundred years ago, what happened in Lancashire's cotton mills and Cornwall's tin mines changed the world. Now it's the turn of Silicon Roundabout and the hacktivists.'

Alex Newson, Curator of the exhibition at the Design Museum, said:

"Will changes in traditional manufacturing cause a reversal of the traditional manufacturing powerbases?

"Small-scale makers and sellers have typically produced the type of objects that factories don't. But what if small companies, or even individuals, began making objects that were previously only viable, either technologically or economically, through mass-manufacture?"

The exhibition also has a deconstruction of Puma shoes that let users discover the process of manufacturing. It shows what's possible if we apply the same high tech approach used in manufacturing to 'unmaking' and 'remaking'.

The exhibition is now open and will run until the end of October.