These days, speaking of new techniques equals new possibilities. Not only has the consumption of fashion radically changed with the use of social media, but the very design itself has significantly evolved with digital techniques. One example of the ever-growing fashion evolution is that of Danit Peleg, a fashion design student who based her graduate collection completely on 3D-printing. She has experimented with materials and received a result that is similar to usual fabrics – a discovery that opened doors to creating pieces completely made of 3D-printed fabrics. The aim of her collection was to create garments that are printable on your own 3D-printer, in your own home – an approach that is bound to shift the relationship between production, distribution and consumption of fashion in the (near) future. The project and the technique might not be completely there yet, owning a 3D printer is still not common and it takes a lot of hours to produce a shoe or a dress, but just in a few years printing will be common and ordinary – both as a new way of creating fabrics as well as a production process as a whole.

It is interesting to note how the inspiration behind Peleg’s collection, despite its technological core, resides in craftsmanship of past centuries. In fact, her work draws references from Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. Could it be that she wanted to express the liberation behind being able to create one’s own clothes, mastering the craft of production in the 21st century? While many might say that digital techniques represent a threat to the traditional design knowledge and techniques that have built the industry for the last 200 years, perhaps it would be better to consider it as a complement to the traditional design process and as a possibility for new and established designers to continue pushing the limits.

When it comes to emotions, 3D printing has recently proved to be an accessible means to please our fancies. Forget about computer numerical control machines used in advanced material manufacturing or robotics, and turn to the first, grassroots experiments that involve end users and their irrepressible impulse for consumerism and fun. Isn’t the chance to scan and print our own face a democratic way to narcissism? And aren’t the open-source platforms like Thingiverse one of the new easiest channels of access to indiscriminate possession, no matter that they really propose in terms of aesthetics and uses?

Nevertheless, it’s because of design that a new politique des auteurs comes to life through 3d printing, showing that a beautiful way to express ourselves is at our fingertips even when technologies are still immature. At the latest Salone del Mobile, the “Desiderabilia” exhibition promoted by In Residence – Design Dialogues showcased a collection of fairy inventions describing the emotional relationship between people and objects. Thus, this unpredictable series of 3D printed creations – for example a virtual ikebana (by duo Minale Maeda), a mole mailbox (by Matteo Cibic), a dreams’ dome (by Giorgia Zanellato) – were conceived by curators as a means to tickle designers’ imagination and provide an affordable way of materializing their oddest fantasies.

Nevertheless, when it comes to functions, 3D printing has recently been able to accomplish its potential in the broken ground of furniture. Deservedly awarded at the last edition of Interieur 2014 in the “Objects” category, “Keystones”, again by duo Minale-Maeda is the quintessence of a metonymic project, succeeding in rethinking the whole furniture production and distribution chains through the design of a single piece. Per se, Keystone is a simple plastic joint – nor ugly, nor particularly seductive – that through a system of integrated screws dovetails the table components in a stable and replicable solution. From a wider perspective, however, it represents a tangible attempt to concretely rethink the whole furniture supply chain, allowing people to print their joints by themselves, choose favourite materials or finishings, assemble the piece, and possibly involve local artisans in the realization of the piece.

Minale-Maeda’s acknowledgement is the result of a long-lasting research. Started in 2012 as a self initiated project, Keystones is a genuine synthesis of a contemporary mind-set which plausibly integrates in its DNA different elements: from open source inspiration– “from Rietveld’s sketches to the online Lego community”, as designers state – to downloadable design, sustainability and a DIY attitude. All issues that we rarely encounter among furniture and product design, and that has only started to show new, intriguing results.

But last week’s acquisition by Victoria and Albert Museum in London shows deeper implications of these new means of production. As part of their Design Fund acquisition, the curators of the museum have decided to add a 3D printed gun to their collection. In fact, in comparison to The Liberator gun, other objects added to the collection this year – which include Formafantasma‘s Botanica collection, The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites, Ear Chairs by Studio Makking & Bey and the George chest of drawers by Gareth Neal – seem innocuous and almost dull.

The Liberator gun was developed and assembled earlier this year by Cody Wilson, a Texas-based law student, through the use of separate printed components entirely made of ABS plastic, with the exception of a metal nail used as a firing pin. While the technical drawings of the project were taken off the internet, The Liberator project nevertheless poses urgent moral and ethical questions about the use of technology in everyday life. In fact, Kieran Long, V&A’s senior curator discusses that “so far people have focused on the ability to print out things at home, such as toys, but this seems to be only part of it. In my view, the gun blew all that away. It showed the fuller implications of the dissemination of the means of production. Everybody is now potentially a manufacturer.” And while the ability to design, produce and build objects by ourselves appears liberating, hopefully this project will show the design world it should finally start being more concerned about issues that go far, far beyond the poetics of form, colour and structure.

According to the enthusiasts, these tools will soon transform us into contemporary demiurges – or simply “makers”, as Chris Anderson suggests – offering us the chance to fully control both design and manufacturing in a process that goes backwards from bits to atoms, that is to say from a 3D file to a three-dimensional object. The sceptics, on the contrary, are reluctant to diminish professional designers’ talent to imagine and create new objects according to their visions and knowledge.

In any case, the opportunities opened by personal fabrication are indeed real, but easy to be misunderstood at these early stages of technology development. Let’s think about the launch of the first 3D printed furniture: when Patrick Jouin presented his Solid collection in 2006, his futuristic interpretation of organic aesthetics impressed the design community, but very few professionals were stunned by the use of 3D-layering for objects on the scale of a chair. The same happened to Endless chair by Dutch designer Dirk Vander Kooij, which was first displayed in 2011 at the Eindhoven Design Academy showcase during the Salone del Mobile days. People got excited by the real-time processing of this seat, which was realized though a print head mounted on a robot arm. Nevertheless, they lost the perception of what its innovation represented: not only a DIY application of a numerical control machine, but a first step into the world of mass customization.

Thus, if we don’t get surprised by the widespread inability to give a proper weight to innovation – design history is full of naïve misunderstandings -, at the same time we should not be astonished that we ignore whether personal fabrication will allow us to fully customize the way our homes look like or, on the contrary, it will be an opportunity to print too many worthless gadgets. What we know for sure, however, is that the biggest revolution is not going to involve the way we imagine, draw or use our furniture, but the way we market them along the whole supply chain. We already got familiar to purchasing our furniture online, and we shall soon get used to buy a 3D file (or download it from an open-content platform) and then print it in a next door Fab Lab. Does it sound apocalyptic? It could, if not only showrooms risk to get obsolete, but also wholesalers risk to become unemployed.