3D Printing

Currently, 3D printers are promoting the change of concept visualization and the meaning of manufacturing. So it is appearing new concepts and approaches: which are going to be the new objects? How will be the transition from the “analog” to the “digital” economy? All we know is that, if something is going to characterize this century, it is the importance of placing at the center the people, their needs, and their uniqueness.


Regarding this question, it is important to deface the product as the ultimate goal. Users are little by little becoming designers, so we must generate tools that make them possible to design their own pieces. We should not ask people to learn computer programs of 3D design, in fact, some designers do not even know them. What we must do is creating intuitive and easily manageable tools. Today’s customer is an active client. They know what they need and they start looking for the ability to design it themselves. That is why the industry is scared and a little lost in this new paradigm, and need to face it, evolve, and look for new business models based on human-centered, creativity, and independent industry.


We can assume, there will be changes on the way of:

• Buying: the power of printing objects relieves us from the current system of “buying what is on the store”. With this, we can create something and go to pick it up at the nearest printer or do it at home.
• Producing: separate the product from the manufacturing, beyond buying a finished object, you can buy the file and print it or even modify it slightly for greater customization.
• Understanding objects: it does not matter if it is cute or ugly, functional or useless. Before, the industry or the designer decided it, but that’s not the case anymore. The object is yours, and you decide the values ​​and attributes of it. You establish its functionality.
• Interpreting reality: objects with new interactions without the ties of the market, new modifications arising from serendipity and neo-situationist. We can generate new objects and, therefore, new intangibles: can we generate a flute with two extra holes and invent new melodies?

But at the object level, this is the first step: newly discovered freedom emanates the emergence of new issues, which are little by little provided with solutions.

What would happen if we could print food?


Imagine cooking the dish you want, with the flavor you prefer and the look you want. We would play with food at higher levels. Can you imagine being able to print meat?


What would happen if we could print houses?


Can you imagine being able to build alone “La Sagrada Familia”? With patience, of course, you could. With 3D printing, you can place this building piece by piece. There are already several examples, including building on the moon!


What would happen if we could print drugs?


Can you imagine having a pharmacy at home? We can even take 3D printers to those territories where the pharmaceutical industry does not arrive. It is not crazy, we already do it.


What would happen if we could print organs?


Can you imagine that you need a heart and in less than a day the hospital has one without waiting for a compatible donor? Can you imagine being able to repair your organs that have deteriorated over time? Maybe, in the end, we will have to self-impose an expiration date to impose ourselves before the capacity to be immortal.
In general terms, we can see the limit is no longer technology but what we want to do with it, and our ability to solve problems in a creative way. We enter an era in which empathizing with the user is the key and in which we have the capacity to generate big questions under a simple structure, what if …? Maybe the possible scenarios scare us, but, think for example in the fire: our ancestor also was scared, but only at the beginning.