Gaia, how are you today?

3D print ceramics parametrically designed with weather data

Long description

We’ve worked hard to shut nature out of our insulated and air-conditioned homes. Only some nature remains in the easily manageable and safe terracotta pot. Yufei Gao 3D-printed a collection of 92 terracotta pots to reflect on the relationship between technology and nature. Each pot is designed using a day’s worth of weather data. The more the temperature, humidity and wind speeds diverge from their averages, the more the pot’s shape is abstracted and distorted. On a particularly stormy day, the pot collapses in on itself. This way, the extremely precise 3D-printer has to surrender to the chaos of Gaia. The collection of pots reminds us that nature is not submissive or unchanging, but chaotic and unyielding.