hand-bent after 3D printing, oberdoerfer & krebs’ seating rethinks digital fabrication

3D-prints become hand-bent furniture in copenhagen

During 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen, among the emerging designers gathered at Ukurant, Oberdoerfer & Krebs presented 3D-printed seating that leaves the machine unfinished, with heat and hand-bending completing each piece after printing.

The Danish studio’s Bend Chair and Bend Stool begin with the familiar language of large-scale extrusion, then shift away from the fixed profile that has come to define much of the field. The pieces are printed, reheated, and bent by hand, with the final shape held between programmed geometry and manual force.

The studio, founded by design duo Jasper Krebs and Bruno Oberdoerfer, works with large-scale 3D printing as a process that can be interrupted, redirected, and shaped after the machine has finished its pass.

Instead of treating the print as a finished object straight from the nozzle, their projects build in moments where heat, gravity, timing, and touch become part of the making. More than a technical file, the toolpath carries instructions for future movement.

Bend Stool and Bend Chair, Oberdoerfer & Krebs, Ukurant | image © designboom

bend chair and bend stool challenge the printed profile

Bend Chair and Bend Stool were developed for Ukurant, a group show of emerging designers, where the duo explored how 3D-printed seating could move beyond the now familiar side-profile extrusion chair. In many printed furniture pieces, the profile is built on its side, creating a thick continuous silhouette that carries both structure and surface. Oberdoerfer & Krebs use that archetype as a starting point, then change the sequence of production.

The chair and stool are printed with pre-programmed bend zones integrated into the toolpath. After printing, these zones are reheated so that selected parts soften before others, allowing the pieces to be bent into shape through a manual operation. The process gives the furniture a different kind of tension. The printer sets up the structure, but the body still completes the form.

Bend Chair fabrication process, Oberdoerfer & Krebs | image courtesy the artists

material behavior becomes part of the toolpath

Using expandable colorFabb LW-PLA, Oberdoerfer & Krebs can make the middle layers of the print foam up, reducing material use while changing the behavior of the object without switching materials. The same filament can become lighter, softer, or more rigid depending on temperature and printing strategy. This gives the duo a way to design through material states instead of material change.

The Bend Stool began as Jasper Krebs’ third semester project at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, where he used the semester before his thesis to test ideas that could carry into larger research. By combining 3D printing with reheating and bending, the project makes room for a new formal language within a field that can easily become visually repetitive. The complexity sits inside the toolpath first, then appears through a simple gesture after printing.

Bend Chair (detail), Oberdoerfer & Krebs | image courtesy the artists

upsideDown turns a printer’s detour into a hook

With another experimental project, UpsideDown, the duo takes a more playful route into the same question of control. A wall-mounted rack is made by deliberately sending the 3D printer off-path during the print. Midway through the process, the nozzle steps away from the wall and extrudes plastic into open air, allowing the material to sag under its own weight before the machine returns to continue building.

Once cooled, the object is flipped upside down and the sagging loops become hooks. The project sits between controlled geometry and the kind of accidental form that additive manufacturing usually tries to avoid. In Oberdoerfer & Krebs’ hands, the failed line becomes the useful part. A droop becomes a place to hang something.

UpsideDown (fabrication process), Oberdoerfer & Krebs | image courtesy the artists

human layers brings textile memory into pellet printing

For the Biennale for Craft & Design, Oberdoerfer & Krebs presented Human Layers as a shift into vessel-making, maintaining the same interest in process. A 3D-printed vase is inspired by ikat, the textile dyeing technique in which pattern is planned through the treatment of threads before weaving. Here, that logic is translated into pellet-extrusion printing, where color appears through flow, timing, and repeated human intervention.

The duo developed a method for controlling multiple colors in pellet-based 3D printing, calculating where each hue would appear across the surface. PLA pellets are tinted with liquid masterbatch, then weighed and added at specific moments during the print. Each batch moves through the nozzle, settles into the layer below, and leaves a record of its passage. What reads as ornament in the finished vase begins as material choreography.

Human Layers (fabrication process), Oberdoerfer & Krebs | image courtesy the artists

craft moves through the machine

Human Layers challenges the split between the machine-made and the handcrafted by placing both inside the same process. The patterns demand precision, repetition, and calculation, but they also rely on the hand adding material at the right time. After many tests, color begins to behave like a woven structure, with shifts that carry the rhythm of the printer and the judgment of the maker.

Across Bend Chair, Bend Stool, UpsideDown, and Human Layers, Oberdoerfer & Krebs treat large-scale 3D printing as a field of small decisions rather than a closed system. Their work expands the printed object through post-print bending, off-path extrusion, foamed material, and timed color changes. The projects point toward a version of digital fabrication where craft survives inside the machine, in the places where the process can still move.