Oct 28, 2016 | By Nick

Korean designer Se Yoon Park has created a spectacular art installation of 3D printed trees called: Light, Darkness and the Tree.

The designer has worked on this one installation for the last three years and now, finally, he has presented his work to the public in his art gallery in Brooklyn, New York.

A qualified architect who studied at Columbia University, Park has studied 3D printing extensively for his professional work as a designer and as a means of expressing his artistic vision. Additive manufacturing has proved invaluable to architects that want to bring their 3D designs to life and now architectural scale models have become an integral part of the design and sales process.

It has also converted a whole generation of creative designers and now the 3D printing world is feeling the benefit. Park is an ideal case in point. He loves designing buildings, but something was missing. He felt removed from the final product and he decided to explore the relationship between light, darkness and form with a more personal sideline project. Here he can indulge his creative side without worrying about the technical requirements or a client’s specification.

He can just let his mind run free and that led him down this unique path to a series of 3D printed trees. Inevitably there’s a geometric and sculptured look to Park’s trees. They are organic in their own way, yet there’s a real architectural feel that reflects the Korean’s background in construction.

“While I work with traditional casting and fabrication methods, I am thankful for the contributions 3D printing has made to my design and process, and believe the combination of these methods is the way forward,” he said. “Through 3D printing, I was able to manifest my ideas tangibly, and i.materialise has aided me on my journey to capture light and darkness.

“With the help of i.materialise, I am now able to communicate my message to the people through my sculptures.”

The shadow that a solid object creates is just as important as the piece itself in Park’s world, so he spent years perfecting the final shapes that are made up of multiple 3D printed components. Internal lighting can change the whole look and feel of the structure in a second and it also interacts with the natural environmental light to create an ever-changing and evolving gradation of the shadows.

Of course, Park is a draughtsman at heart and like any artistic architect he started out by sketching his designs. He then moved on to handmade models before moving to Rhino to create the 3D design that would go to the printer. “The biggest challenge was catering for the necessary margin of error while retaining a shape precision that was essential to the structural integrity of the overall sculpture,” he said.

He started out with PLA and ABS prototypes, but he wanted a perfect finish and soon progressed to i.materalise’s Polyamide and a laser sintering process that makes use of granular nylon powder.

That gave him options when it came to the porosity, which affected the structure, allowed him to employ a series of dyes to carefully control the color and it also afforded him more opportunities to play with artificial lighting.

Polyamide has a unique translucent quality that reacts to the environmental sunlight and the bulbs that Park placed strategically throughout the sculpture to give his trees an ethereal quality that he felt he just couldn’t achieve with a simple desktop FDM printer.

The partnership with i.materialise clearly helped his cause. The Belgian company offers an online service that covers everything from Polyamide models and prototypes through to finished titanium parts for planes. You can send your product and choose from 100 different materials and finishes, which allows you to just get on with the artistic process.

So what started out as a vision in a US-based Korean designers mind is now on display in a New York art gallery thanks to the input of a Belgian 3D printing company. It’s a truly international meeting of minds and a great demonstration of the wonders of 3D printing.

You can see more pictures and read all about the artistic process on Park’ website and if you’re in New York then drop by his gallery in Red Hook, Brooklyn and see just what a true artist with classical architectural training can achieve with Rhino 3D and a 3D printer.

All images credit: Se Yoon Park

 

Source: [i.Materialise]

 

Posted in 3D Printing Application

 

 

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