This summer we have organised our first Casal d'Estiu with a series of workshops under the concept of Self-Sufficiency.
A topic that we have addressed from different perspectives such as habitat, body, food and objects. Perspectives that are different but interdependent.

‘Imprimiendo barro en 3D’ took place at Coudre’s office the 5th of August 2020.

It was a pleasure to meet Jude and Valeria from coudre studio, of course we had to ask them some questions about their link to 3D printing and current projects.

You are 3 in your team, how do you know each other and does each of you has his speciality?
Jude (J) : Valeria and me (Jude) come from the same art & design college class, and Raul was our teacher for a while. Raul specializes in programming and digital fabrication; Valeria in different kinds of design, and I’m more trained in ceramics. However, although we have different backgrounds, we’ve taught each other what we know and we end up having several different functions. Our interests are intersectional.

You describe coudre.studio as a research studio, can you tell us a little bit more about it?
Valeria (V) : Clay, and even other paste 3D printing is relatively new, but we are not the first ones to develop it. Our research focuses mostly on the object design part, sharing info on how to build cheaper alternatives for clay 3D printing, exploring traditional clay processes somewhat unknown to other clay 3D printers and (by far the most difficult one) bridging the gap between seasoned artisans and the more tech-savvy, be it through talks, classes or personal practice.

“Working with clay relaxes my mind, it’s all muscle memory.”

— Jude

Jude, when was the particular moment that you've got in contact with 3D printing and why?
J : Back in college, I took an interest in programming and taught myself the basics. Raul started running a computational arts workshop outside of my regular classes, which covered not only programming but also digital fabrication, which I started to feel curious about. Through that I found out more about the printing, prototyping and other things he was doing in his business outside the college classes, and asked him if I could do my internship with him. That’s when I started learning about 3D printing, and I’m glad it was through someone as multidisciplinary and design-conscious as Raul.

Why did you choose to work with clay?
J : I started working with clay more or less at the same time when college started demanding we gave more conceptual weight to our work. I was exploring code-generated graphics and text, trying to retroactively find a discourse to back up what I was doing— which was mostly just playing with what I was discovering could be done with computers, but my teachers needed something to grade that they were familiar with.
I began spending afternoons at the college pottery workshop, which I’m grateful I had access to, to work with something more material. Working with clay relaxes my mind, it’s all muscle memory. Teachers (and myself) would let me justify my learning process as just material experimentation, something that I felt wasn’t allowed with code, paint or other media.
I think all art, nowadays including artisanry, is conceptual/political, since it can’t escape a certain context, and it’s important to be mindful of it. But I found my (still mutating) discourse way after college tried to squeeze it out of me. I still work with clay because it’s a beautiful, versatile medium, and besides digital playfulness I’m also very interested in its low-tech, sustainable origins.

“I want to explore the possibilities offered by digital design with our machines. Eventually, we’re going to see these machines in the workshops of future artisans. ”

— Valeria

Valeria, what is challenging you when you work in 3D printing? Is it the creation of the design, materials or something else you have in mind?
V : Ceramics are a huge world of manufacturing processes with a great deal of potential for experimentation, and 3D printing is also a tool with a lot of possibilities (besides some established rules). By combining both, we have so much terrain to be explored for the first time, and to be honest it’s difficult to decide what I’m going to print first everyday at the workshop.
I want to explore the possibilities offered by digital design with our machines. Eventually, we’re going to see these machines in the workshops of future artisans. New concepts and words that we work with today in digital design but are not yet used in artisan circles will begin to settle, such as “parametric” or “generative” objects. I’m fascinated by the intersection of digital concepts and the tangible (or analog) world and I aim to reflect that in our work.

The process of the 3D visualisation is for many still unfamiliar, do you have any tips for beginners or platforms where you get input?
V : Nowadays many open source platforms are available to anyone who wants to find information about how to start building plastic 3D printers or hacking them into clay (or other pastes) extruding printers. There’s a great maker community documenting the process and methodology that goes into building all these machines, you can check out Bryan Cera’s project for example. As for open source platforms, there’s sites like Wikifactory or Thingiverse.

Coudre Studio was part already on several projects in design and for exhibitions, which project was the most interesting so far and what challenges do you had to face?
J : The challenge so far has been with projects demanding industrial precision. We’ve needed to prototype pieces with very specific measurements so that they could fit an internal “skeleton”, and it’s been difficult to compensate for the exact amount of contraction of the material as it changes states (wet, dry, bisqued and fired at high temperature). This was new for us, since the size of our pieces was somewhat arbitrarily decided. But it was a much needed exercise that led us to new methodologies which would also work with more industrial projects.

What fascinates you about printed objects?
V : The design process is different, specific to 3D printing. Many people are not aware that not every shape can be printed— overhangs, to give an example, are very limiting. Steep angles, depending on the material, will collapse; a layered texture will always be visible or need post-processing to eliminate, shape resolution can be limited... So it’s not enough to design a 3D object, you must design with the machine and material in mind. Maybe it makes more sense to print the object sideways, or by pieces, or with a non-traditional shape, and all these are genuinely meaningful ways to make an object interesting, beyond simply decorating. Limitations give design meaning.
Then again, designing under limitations will be the case with any manufacturing technique. But we think clay 3D printing is still relatively unexplored from a design perspective, and thus delightful to work with.