Rat Infestation at the Non Fiction Design Collective

Lloyd Alter
Design / Sustainable Product Design
May 21, 2009

I loved the sense of humour in the Non Fiction Design Collective. They use old bricks and china castoffs:

We want to intentionally blur the line between the hand and the tool, between the idea and the object. We are interested in merging the worlds of ceramics & printmaking and the remaking and reuse of industrial cast-offs. Operating in a hybrid world between handwork and mechanization our labor-intensive processes mix with strange detritus. Abandoned wallpaper and reclaimed bricks combine with hand carved block prints and fussy porcelain.

But they are beginning to get into new technologies:

We have begun to add CNC milling and rapid prototyping to our repertoire in order to expand our reach into industrial mimicry.

A good example of the mix of processes: For the chandelier above, they took a freeze-dried rat, did a 3D scan, made a 3D print, made a mould from it and cast the replica rats.