Federico’s movement around the studio is nimble. His workspace is neat and minimalistic — somehow tidy even when working on messier tasks, like trimming or sanding edges. Though he has lived in Finland for nearly four years, he has a distinctly Roman air: tailored trousers, dark curled hair, regular cappuccino breaks at the café on the floor above the workshop. He wears a cameo of Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire, around his neck on a leather cord.

The room is as close to sterile as a living workshop can be; the delicacy of these electronics requires a kind of non-pollution of the space. The machines — there are nearly 40 of them and sometimes they are all working at the same time — speak. Not in unison, but as the noise in a café bends to white when many conversations take place at once. It is possible to eavesdrop, but only on the machines closest to you, where soliloquies erupt at different paces and volumes. The identical white cubes glow from inside and are arranged in rows of four by three, spaced equally on shelves against the glass wall. They are incubators nursing forward in their wombs small miracles of design and ingenuity, pixel by pixel materialized in PLA

Federico loads the printer with the printing filament, a thermoplastic material coiled onto a drum that is best carried with two hands. He laces it into the machine from the back and then feeds it into a wandering transparent tube, angled like an oversized drinking straw.

The machines can get hot, especially when the metal nozzle that extrudes the material is heating up the plastic. His finger clips the metal nozzle and he pulls it back quickly, taking a short, sharp breath in. He shakes his hand loosely in the air to release the sting of the burn and turns back near-instantly to programming the machine.

Fixing a USB key into the printer, he feeds it data. His face travels close to the glass window protecting the printing plate, reflecting its light onto his glasses. He conducts a choreography of button presses into the command panel and the printer jolts to life. The first shock of sentience. Good morning, sculptor-by-proxy.

A student enters the workshop to ask for advice on their 3D print plan. Federico checks the 3D-modelled file on the student’s computer, resting his chin between his thumb and forefinger. After clicking around the file, rotating and probing it, he suggests minor changes that will improve the integrity of the structure. The interior of each print, or the infill, is built in a pattern. The properties can change — it can be made more densely or more loosely depending on how hard the final print should be — but it often forms a grid, triangles, or a honeycomb.

Federico and the student are chatting. They land on the topic of Austria’s national debt, and one bill that amounted to $18 billion. His colleague Greta, who also works as an assistant here, weaves into the conversation.

‘But who can imagine this sum of money?’ asks Greta. ‘It’s beyond comprehension.’

‘Eighteen billion is two airports,’ says Federico directly.

Greta and I look at each other, considering this calculation.

‘I measure everything by infrastructure,’ he apologizes.

‘You should have been an urban planner,’ says Greta, smiling.

‘I would have loved that. Not now, though. I would have been in the age of Napoleon. I want to build things, not fix things that are falling apart.’

Much of the printing process is sitting, is waiting. Is watching closely for the first minutes of a print, when the nozzle darts rapidly across the printing plate. Is making sure that the printer is docile and obedient, and that the material is extruding evenly. Is taking a seat at your desk when you’re satisfied that the print has started well. Is standing up at your stool and craning your neck, your hands clutched to the table’s edge, to check the progress. Is sitting down again at your laptop, tucking your left hand under your chin and cupping the other hand over your mouse as you continue to work on your 3D model. Is standing up at your stool once more and craning your neck to check the progress. Is sitting down again. Is standing up, and — on seeing that something might be off — walking swiftly to the printer, bringing hands on knees to get level with the nozzle as it zips on its axes. Is verifying that all is OK. Is walking back to your desk and sitting down again. Is standing up. Is sitting down.


Eventually, often, the print will fail. Sometimes the issue is human error (the file was planned poorly) and sometimes it is bad luck (the coil of plastic feeding into the machine runs out, technically also human error). Sometimes, infuriatingly, there is no obvious reason for failure.

The machines are industrious and like to work past failure. This is one of the reasons Federico must supervise; it’s hardly a “set it and forget it” operation. When a print has failed — insofar that it starts to look not the way it was designed to look, perhaps skewed precariously to one side due to a poorly constructed 3D model, perhaps missing a section where the material failed to catch — the printer might continue printing around the error regardless, like a persistent colleague aiming to clear his desk before the weekend.

By now, three-and-a-half years after first stepping foot in this workshop, Federico is used to failure for any of the above reasons. It is frustrating, but there is little sense in lamenting.

He mutters under his breath.

‘Ma, che cazzo.’

He sets to work resetting the print, scraping off the failed attempt, re-entering data points on the computer, respooling the big thread.

Unexpectedly, a lecturer with a group of students arrives to tour the workshop. They haven't booked a time. Federico springs up to attend to them like a diplomat, introducing the likes and dislikes of the machines. When the group leaves 45 minutes later, he returns to the print he left running. This time it is a success.

Often, the 3D-printed item is just one step before the next in Federico’s assembly line. After, the print will go to the ceramics studio. Or the metal workshop, or water jet cutting. Eventually, it turns into a lamp, or a stool. A mug inspired by the Guggenheim Museum. A porcelain race car (Ferrari, naturally) with a silver trim hand-painted with a painfully fine brush. Building and building up, from nothing to something.