Sinken

The dialogue between digital precision and material behaviour.

Sinken—the German word for "drooping"—is a collaborative project with designer Lisa Halwax that explores the expressive potential of porcelain 3D printing by embracing, rather than resisting, material failure.

Inspired by the nested forms of traditional Matryoshka dolls, the project investigates how stacking and over-extruding porcelain can push the material beyond the limits of conventional additive manufacturing. Printed without structural support, the porcelain is encouraged to collapse, stretch, and deform under its own weight, allowing gravity to become an active collaborator in the making process.

Rather than correcting these imperfections, Sinken celebrates them. The resulting forms move beyond the precision of the digital model, revealing the unpredictable dialogue between machine, material, and gravity. Each object becomes a record of porcelain's own agency, demonstrating that making is not always about control, but about creating the conditions for the material to shape itself.