Lights made from 3D-printed plant-based plastic – San Francisco firm leads the way in eco-friendly design
Victoria Slaker, the vice-president of industrial design at Ammunition, talks about the studio’s collaboration with 3D-printing platform Gantri to create lights made from corn-based plastic
How did this project come to fruition? “Ian [Yang, the founder of Gantri] reached out to us about designing lights. We’re pretty tech-forward and always curious about new manufacturing techniques. We ended up helping him expand his platform so more designers could use it and create a wider range of products.”
Why lighting? “It’s emotional and atmospheric. The light series was an exploration of what we can do that you can’t do in any other way. They can only be 3D-printed.”
What’s the advantage of 3D printing? “3D printing sounds like it has endless opportunities but there are constraints. It comes down to maths and algorithms and how to support the material as it is built up. It’s a controlled, precise nozzle that is building up the material. You have to respect the laws of physics when it comes to that.
“Ian worked with a group in the Netherlands that developed a corn-based plastic. It creates a great surface. It has a quality that is almost like a ceramic – nice colours, a nice matt finish and a seamlessness you can’t get with other products.”
Is using plant-based plastic more environmentally friendly? “The difference between corn-based and petroleum-based plastic is the source of the plastic. Corn-based plastic is more eco-friendly in that sense. But it can also be industrially composted. As we were creating samples of these lights, anything we didn’t use, Gantri has a bin where we could put it and they would take it and compost it.
“Also, when you’re printing on demand there’s no waste. A company doing it in the traditional way is making a bet on how much they can sell. And if it doesn’t sell, there’s a lot of waste.”
What inspired the design of the lights? “The designer of the Signal family of lights grew up in New York and was inspired by all the louvred air vents you see outside buildings. The louvres allow people to direct the light and it’s also a punchy graphic.
“The Carve collection started from an exploration of the table light. It shows the seamlessness you can achieve with 3D printing. Imagine a solid block of something and carving it away to reveal this inner section.
“The Gio collection was done by one of our French designers. His thing is a riff on 1960s Italian design.”
