About Studio BL

Studio BL creates architectural design products with a positive impact for people and planet. They focus on sustainable designs like customizable lamps, furniture and visual work like ornaments and sculptures: playful and captivating designs that create or complement interior and exterior spaces.

The studios’ design solutions are based on research, intuition, and professional experience in the fields of architecture, design, and engineering. The driving force of Studio BL is making people happy with original designs that answer to the social challenges of our time. In their search for a unifying design language, inspiration often comes from nature, the play of light and shadow, and math-art. The studios’ main objective is enabled by the interaction between algorithmic design and digital fabrication methods, 3D printing more specifically.

Reasons why Studio BL uses 3D printing

Studio BL shares their fascination for patterns and shapes with natural or harmonious properties including Fibonacci sequences, golden ratio, and symmetry. The studio utilizes the beauty of these forms with the precision and freeform possibilities of algorithmic design and production techniques like laser cutting and FFF 3D printing.

“Besides the high accuracy and freeform creation, the great thing about 3D printing is its flexible material use: once the 3D model, material and printer are setup correctly, it is a very efficient and repeatable production method. Most of our designs are made to be 3D printed without supports (usually models to be printed in vase mode) so the waste of materials is reduced to a minimum. This combined with the wide range of locally available renewable and recycled 3D-print materials makes FFF 3D-printing potentially a very sustainable method to make all kinds of products.” – Bastiaan Luijk, owner Studio BL

 
To define what is sustainable, Studio BL invests their time and effort in staying up to date with the latest technologies and insights to reduce their CO2 footprint. Whenever possible, their production materials are made from renewable sources (PLA, Lignin), up-cycled, or recycled materials (PETG). All 3D-printers and materials used by Studio BL are produced within Europe for socio-economic reasons (fair income and employment, community safety, etc.) and a lower CO2 footprint by transportation (prevent ship or flight cargo).

Why the Tractus3D T1250?

After the studio launched a series of 3D printed lamps, they received more and more inquiries about larger scale lampshades. While there is a lot of flexibility in adjusting the design (due to parametric design), they were limited by the maximum print size. Studio BL also creates multipart lamps that can be assembled into one bigger lamp, but for some designs this would compromise the elegance and simplicity. The large-scale lamp designs needed to be printed in one print, on a large volume 3D printer.

Studio BL did an extensive amount research before they bought their first 3D printers. Reliability and print quality have always been top priority when selecting a 3D-printer for their workflow. The new, large volume 3D-printer had to meet the standards the studio was used to with their other 3D-printers:

• Fast and reliable printing for years to come
• Professional support and/or community
• Easily maintainable and good part availability
• Able to print with different nozzle sizes (0,4 – 1,0 mm)
• Heated bed
• Print abrasive materials like Woodfill
• Compatible with Simplify3D or different mainstream slicer
• Produced in Europe, preferably Holland

The Tractus3D T1250 is the perfect match for Studio BL: this desktop model meets the studio’s requirements and is currently used for production of newer large scale lampshade designs and will be used to 3D-print furniture objects as well. Follow the studio on Instagram @designstudiobl or check their website www.studiobl.nl