Year: 2026
For Milan Design Week 2026 we were sent to Dropcity with Fabrication Topologies: a week of open studio that we interpreted as a research space open to the public and in dialogue with the rest of the exhibition.
The project investigates two parallel directions: the generation of urban-inspired patterns, and the development of representations for architectural and artistic model-making, with 3D printing as the primary tool for materialisation. At the core of the research lies the relationship between the designer and computational tools — AI in particular — and the question of how these can expand formal possibilities without displacing creative authorship.
The week included two open workshops: Data Relief, in which urban cartographic data is transformed into printable three-dimensional reliefs, and Pattern Ground, in which parametric rules generate modular surfaces that remain under the designer's control. Both workshops shared parts of our actual workflow with the public, showing how AI-assisted tools can be integrated into a process that remains authored.
Tool