3-D printing produces book-shaped benches headed for Hobe Sound Library

Speaker 1, a presenter for Art in Public Places, described a project to produce two 3-D-printed benches for the new Hobe Sound Library. "So we've got 2 benches that we're printing that are both in the shape of an open book," the presenter said, adding that each bench "[is] coming together in 4 parts each."

The presenter said the benches are made of construction-grade materials using a large-format, industrial 3-D process. He described the workflow: "We load all of our material up here behind in a dry powder form. It goes down into our first our mixing pump. We hydrate it. We pump it over to our robot, and our robot's actually a retired automotive robot," and the robot "lays the object down 1 layer at a time until you have something."

Project components include a central element representing the open pages and flanking support structures that form the seating or side profiles of the book. The presenter said the design aim was to create pieces "reminiscent of the library and fit in that environment."

The presenter placed the bench project in the context of prior work: the team produced artificial reefs for the Florida Oceanographic Center on Hutchinson Island and built agility obstacles and tunnels used by the Marine Corps to train service animals. He also cited a commercial installation for a cafe in Downtown Tampa to illustrate the range of applications.

No installation date or funding sources were specified in the remarks. The presenter characterized the technology's limits as primarily creative: "Everything from aquatic elements to, you know, infrastructure to architectural features," he said, and added, "your only limitation is your imagination for now."

Next steps described in the remarks are continued printing and assembly of the bench components; the transcript did not specify a delivery or installation timeline for the Hobe Sound Library benches.