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FORMA

Address

Akademija likovnih umjetnosti, Ilica 85

Entry ticket

€5, pay at the entrance

Exhibition dates

15. 9. utorak

19.30—22.00

16. 9. srijeda

14.00—21.00

17. 9. četvrtak

14.00—21.00

18. 9. petak

14.00—21.00

19. 9. subota

11.00—21.00

20. 9. nedjelja

11.00—19.00
Address

Akademija likovnih umjetnosti, Ilica 85

Exhibition dates

15. 9. utorak

19.30—22.00

16. 9. srijeda

14.00—21.00

17. 9. četvrtak

14.00—21.00

18. 9. petak

14.00—21.00

19. 9. subota

11.00—21.00

20. 9. nedjelja

11.00—19.00
Entry ticket

€5, pay at the entrance

Printed Craft: Polish Design in the Age of Digital Fabrication

FORMA³ presents a generation of Polish designers for whom digital fabrication has become part of an ordinary studio practice. The exhibition brings together lamps, vessels, accessories and sculptural objects produced locally, in short series or as individual pieces. Its title can be read as form raised to the third power: three dimensions, but also three forces acting on every object in the exhibition: technology, tradition and a decision made by hand. None of these elements is presented as dominant. What matters is the relationship between them and the way in which that relationship changes the object, the production process and the role of the designer.

The conditions that made this practice possible took shape in Poland from the early 2010s onward, as lower-cost additive manufacturing expanded beyond industrial laboratories. Zortrax became one of the most widely recognised Polish names in fused-filament fabrication, while companies such as ZMorph, 3DGence and Sinterit developed machines for different professional and workshop contexts. Founded in Kraków in 2014, Sinterit introduced the Lisa in 2015; the company describes it as the most accessible SLS printer on the market at that time, bringing a technology previously associated with far more expensive industrial systems into a compact format. A parallel ecosystem of filament producers, technical universities, independent workshops and online communities helped circulate materials and practical knowledge. Access widened again after 2021 through the government programme Future Laboratories, which financed technical equipment for Polish primary schools and included 3D printers in its core catalogue. These developments belong to successive phases rather than a single moment, but together they made digital fabrication increasingly ordinary: machines entered studios, laboratories and classrooms, materials became easier to obtain, and a generation of designers learned to treat 3D printing as one workshop method among many.


FORMA³ looks at what emerged after the initial fascination with the technology itself. The works do not celebrate the machine as a futuristic spectacle. They use it to address questions traditionally associated with craft: how a surface records the process of making, how an object can be altered without being replaced, how ornament can become structure, and how a functional form can retain the individuality of its maker. The printer operates here less like an automated factory and more like a contemporary kiln, loom or carving tool. Its value lies not in unlimited repetition, but in the possibility of working locally, developing variants, producing in small numbers and continuing to adjust a design over time.

This approach is particularly clear in NOWO. Each object begins as a physical form shaped by hand. It is then scanned and developed through digital modelling and algorithms. The machine does not replace the original gesture; it captures, transforms and extends it. The resulting work preserves the irregularity and organic character of a handmade model while opening it to further formal development. In DOTKA, lace patterns associated with the 1970s are translated into three-dimensional structures. The reference belongs to living memory rather than to a distant ethnographic past, which makes the project less a reconstruction of tradition than a continuation of it through another set of tools.



Other works also treat Polish visual heritage as active material. In Parzenica by 3DRD, the motif associated with traditional clothing from the Podhale region is enlarged, simplified and recomposed until it becomes the structure and identity of the bag rather than an applied decoration. Sniezka combines the symmetry of folk ornament, the lightness of lace and forms associated with snow and mountain landscapes. Warsaw-based WONTEK treats 3D printing as a contemporary form of weaving, combining colour, pattern and texture layer by layer. Its Mirage collection comprises six lamp forms and three abstract, organic surface patterns. An original printing method integrates multicoloured ornament directly into the printed surface rather than applying it afterwards. Depending on the viewing angle, the pattern becomes more or less visible, turning perception and movement into part of the object. The lamps are produced in Warsaw from PLA, a bio-based polymer commonly used in fused-filament 3D printing.

This relationship between pattern and structure has a particular resonance in the context of Lodz. The city developed through textile production, looms and repeated patterns. Its design history is inseparable from the industrial translation of ornament into systems of manufacture. A surface constructed layer by layer, carrying a pattern that shifts as the viewer moves, does not imitate weaving literally, but it belongs to a related way of thinking: structure and decoration are produced together.



Heritage is only one direction within the exhibition. GIBKI's POP collection uses saturated colour, modular construction and a playful language associated with postmodern design and the Memphis movement. Its interchangeable elements allow the user to change the rhythm, colour and character of a vase without replacing the entire object. The work proposes a product that remains open after purchase and recognises that interiors, needs and preferences change. Modularity is therefore not merely a technical feature. It becomes a way of imagining a longer and more active relationship between a person and an everyday object.

Vlad Oganov's Noctis collection develops a different visual language. Its starting points are obsidian, cooled lava and dark mineral matter with heat concealed inside. Amber light emerges through graphite-coloured, granular surfaces, giving the lamps the presence of geological formations or slowly cooling fragments of landscape. The objects balance utility and sculpture, but their meaning is not exhausted by either category. They shape the atmosphere of an interior and become part of its evening rituals. Their modular construction also allows individual components to be replaced, connecting the sensual quality of the work with a practical approach to maintenance and repair.

BLUBA Studio, founded in Lodz by designer Kajetan Luteracki, also uses 3D printing to move lighting between product and sculpture. WOBL grows out of the wall like a luminous, organic form - part mushroom, part wave, part object from an unknown world. Its rhythmic surface expands around a vertical axis of light, creating a sense of depth and movement. It evokes soft tissues and the unsettling landscapes of Yves Tanguy. The visible layers of 3D printing guide and diffuse the light, so during the day the lamp remains a sculptural relief, while after dark it transforms into an almost living, luminous structure. The project extends BLUBA's broader interest in small-series, locally produced lighting and in PLA-based additive manufacturing, while departing from the modular, Memphis-inspired language of the studio's better-known BLAMPAS series.



The selection concentrates on lamps and small domestic objects because these forms reveal the central ideas of the exhibition with particular clarity. Lighting is not treated simply as a product category. It is a way of testing the relationship between structure, material, surface and perception. A printed object is built from successive layers, traces that conventional production often attempts to conceal. In the works presented here, those traces become active. Light passes through the folds of Shine, reveals the internal cross-sections of Meshes, breaks through the mineral crust of Noctis, moves across the woven textures of WONTEK's Mirage and is channelled through the rhythmic relief of BLUBA Studio's WOBL. The manufacturing process becomes visible not as evidence of technical novelty, but as part of the aesthetic and conceptual language of each object.

The same lamps also occupy a productive space between function and sculpture. Light makes them relational: their form changes with distance, viewpoint, surrounding darkness and the character of the interior. Meshes turns the networks and cross-sections of digital modelling into a physical, illuminated landscape. Shine brings together frame, relief and light source in a single composition inspired by processes of flow and accumulation. WONTEK's Mirage uses light and movement to activate ornament. BLUBA Studio's WOBL turns the wall into a field of luminous, organic relief. Noctis treats illumination as something concealed inside matter and gradually revealed. Together, these works show why the lamp is such an important object for contemporary craft: it is useful, atmospheric and capable of making the process of its own construction perceptible.



FORMA³ also enters into a wider conversation about Polish design history. That history is often represented through the mid-century canon and designers such as Teresa Kruszewska, Roman Modzelewski, Marian Sigmund and Józef Chierowski, who worked within systems of factories, standardised series and long production runs. The objects presented here emerge from very different conditions. They may be developed by one or two people in a studio, produced from a digital file and modified between successive versions. The factory gives way to the workshop, while the fixed series becomes an evolving system.

The continuity between these periods does not lie in a shared style. It lies in a way of thinking: trust in material, formal discipline, an interest in objects that move between utility and sculpture, and an ability to work creatively within specific technological conditions. The designers in FORMA³ do not treat tradition as a collection of motifs waiting to be copied, nor technology as an autonomous source of innovation. Both become working materials. The exhibition therefore presents digital craft not as a break with design history, but as one of its contemporary forms: local, experimental, materially attentive and open to further development.

Exhibitors

Vlad Oganov — Vlad Oganov Objects
Sonia Trapkowska, Filip Rydzyński — GIBKI
Oliwia Ledzińska — NOWO
Stanisław Stupkiewicz, Filip Niczyj, Zbigniew Rybiński — Wontek
Katarzyna Rumińska-Rutkowska — 3DRD
Kajetan Luteracki — Bluba Studio

Impressum

FORMA³ is presented by Łódź Design Festival

Curatorial team: Bluba Studio, Derive, Gibki Design, Lines & Lines, NOWO by Oliwia Ledzinska, OBJ, UAU, Yam Yest Design


Gallery

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