Danish design studio Oberdoerfer & Krebs showcases 3D-printed bent chairs

en.Wedoany.com Reported - Danish design studio Oberdoerfer & Krebs (Oberdoerfer & Krebs) presented two 3D-printed seats, the Bend Chair and Bend Stool, at the Ukurant exhibition during the 3daysofdesign festival in Copenhagen. Both pieces were created using large-scale extrusion printing, printed flat with pre-programmed bending zones embedded in the toolpath. After printing, these bending areas were reheated to soften selected sections before others, allowing the parts to be manually bent into their final shapes.

The two pieces were printed using colorFabb LW-PLA (lightweight polylactic acid) filament, an expandable material that foams in its middle layer when exposed to specific temperatures, reducing material volume without changing the feedstock. By varying temperature and printing strategies, the same filament can produce areas with different densities and stiffness, enabling designers to work through material behavior rather than material substitution. The Bend Stool originally began as Krebs' third-semester project at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.

The studio extended the same logic to two additional projects. The wall-mounted shelf UpsideDown intentionally caused the printer to deviate from its path during printing, extruding plastic into the air to create a droop, after which the machine resumed printing. Once cooled and flipped, the drooping material became functional hooks. Human Layers, exhibited at the Biennale for Craft & Design, applied timed manual color changes to pellet extrusion printing, drawing on the sequential logic of ikat fabric dyeing to control how pigments appear on the printed vases.