I recently rediscovered „Luzie, der Schrecken der Strasse“ (roughly „Luzie, the terror of the neighborhood“), a TV series I watched as a child. What intrigued me now — way more than the main character and her adventures — where the two modeling clay balls Friedrich & Friedrich that appeared every once in a while and took whatever shape and function was needed in that particular moment. Back then this was simply fun and a little bit of magic for the moment maybe. Today all I could think about was wireless 3D printing and the future of everything.

When we moved into a new apartment a litte while ago, we had all those discussions before, about what to take and what to get rid of. And then all the discussions after about where to put things. I have always been a collector of things — books for example — but under the impression of Luzie and her modeling clay balls I would now reconsider some of my arguments. I don’t want to keep things anymore, I don’t want to collect as much as I used to. Instead I want the very simple basics — a bed, a chair a table, the tools to prepare some decent coffee and some light maybe — and instead of all those boxes and shelves and cupboards I want a new centerpiece for our apartment and I would call it the „fountain of everyday goods“.

This thing is a machine partly inspired by Dave Hakkens „Precious Plastic“ project. It can take all our rubbish in, transform it into a variety of different basic materials and then print anything we need, when we need it — and then recycle it afterwards again.

As a matter of fact I don’t want to own a tool-box anymore. I want a hammer to appear when I need it and to disappear right after. Instead of going through ten different screwdrivers, which somehow never match the 100 different screws I have, I want the one that matches them all. By the way, I wonder what the relationship is between screws sold and screws actually used. If anybody would come up with a smart idea for reusing this crazy amount of left over screws, I will donate a substantial amount. But that is a different story — unless my machine would swallow those screens and turn them into something more useful.

Going through the impressive research Claire and Dries from unfold have recently compiled as co-editors of our upcoming title on 3D printing, I became more and more aware that this fountain of everyday goods almost exists already and that it could literally produce anything. Tools, clothes, toys, buildings — on mars for example — and even food. This nicely connects back to when I first met Claire and Dries. They were running a workshop at Hyperwerk in Basel on 3D printing cookies. So don’t tell me that NASA pizza printing project is an innovation.

Their research also brought up a number of furniture projects, like the brilliant Endless Chair from Dirk Vander Kooij for example and I am thinking that if the fountain would work out, I would clearly need a lot less space. I would print a couple of extra chairs when friends come around for dinner, and would make them disappear after. It would create an interesting challenge for architects and designers to design such transitional spaces and objects. It also bears the opportunity to learn from each iteration. In a way each print out would be another beta release, but at the same time better than the one before and the subtle adjustments needed for a particular need would also always be possible, taking Ronen Kadushins idea of open design from CNC to 3D printing.

I wonder: would the fountain then really be the centre piece, the campfire / TV replacement, would we be sitting around it, looking at the objects that appear? And would that be fun or just a high-tech version of the traditional German „Bleigiessen“ on new years eves ? Or would there be the fountain room in each apartment, the storage space with all the rubbish to recycle and the material and the fountain and we just jump in an out to get what the latest item? Or would it end up being a really large printer mounted at the ceiling of each room and we could print the whole space? Then the place you leave in the morning can easily be different from the one you return to at night. Would we still call that place home? An In-flux-home mabye? Would the element of transition be charming — a bit like in that apartment in which Rock Hudson tried to seduce Doris Day in Pillow Talk — or would it just be random like an average hotel room after all? Based on the particular type of manufacturing, a complete new aesthetic could appear, somewhere between flowstone cave and Jerszy Seymours scum projects maybe.

I could go on and on, could think about the likeliness of a transmission of objects — and later humans — from one place to another. But I don’t want to be too trekky about this. As much as the above fascinates me, that last bit remains scary — for now — even though it is also based on a TV series of my childhood. But what if …? What if that actually is not that far away anymore? What if it does work out? Well then I will simply have to reconsider the name of this little side project idea to „the fountain of everything“.