Absolutely different from traditional furniture design, talented designer Gavin Munro creates a one-of-kind way he calls “Zen 3D printing” to produce artistic chairs, tables and lamps that grow from the ground up. The idea was inspired by a bonsai shaped like a chair in garden when Gavin Munro’s a child, now, his company Full Grown has been developing this technique for ten years, their open-air factory is located in the UK, where there’s a four-acre field with 3,000 trees planted. “In essence it’s an incredibly simple art. You start by training and pruning young tree branches as they grow over specially made formers. At certain points we then graft them together so that the object grows into one solid piece—I’m interested in the way that this is like an organic 3D printing that uses air, soil and sunshine as its source materials,” Munro explains the process. “After it’s grown into the shape we want, we continue to care for and nurture the tree, while it thickens and matures, before harvesting it in the winter and then letting it season and dry. It’s then a matter of planning and finishing to show off the wood and grain inside.”
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