Where does the machine end and the maker begin?
For Dutch designer Olivier van Herpt, this boundary has never been fixed. Instead, it’s a space to be pushed, tested, and reimagined. Based in Eindhoven, van Herpt constructs his own tools, bespoke 3D printers and open-source extruders, that blur the lines between digital precision and human intuition. His work transforms industrial processes into instruments of craft, inviting imperfection, tactility, and even play.
One printer doesn’t extrude so much as drip, mimicking the slow geological process by which stalagmites form. Another, built to run on beeswax, proposes a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based plastics. These devices aren’t black boxes of production ,they’re transparent systems, designed to be understood, adapted, and shared.
Out of these machines come objects that feel deeply human: vases that look hand-woven, ceramics with the softness of hand-sculpted clay, and surfaces marked not by code, but by context ,humidity, vibration, temperature. In van Herpt’s hands, manufacturing becomes not a process of repetition, but one of reinterpretation.
For him, the machine is a collaborator. A vessel, not just for form, but for thought. His works, held in collections at MoMA, Centre Pompidou, and Stedelijk Museum, aren’t just objects; they are evidence of systems re-engineered to invite touch, error, ritual, and intimacy.
Whether working with clay, paraffin, or bronze, van Herpt’s sensibility remains grounded. His studio is part lab, part workshop. He builds what he needs, then shares it openly. At heart, he’s a problem-solver. Not a maker of things, as he says, but a maker of means.
And in a world obsessed with seamlessness and speed, Olivier van Herpt chooses a different path, slower, stranger, and infinitely more curious.
