ABSTRACT
Digital fabrication, maker spaces, fabrication laboratories, and 3D printing have grown strongly in the past five years. Bold claims have been made about the transformatory power of these technologies, ranging from their properties in terms of producing rapid, additive, and iterative versions in a design process to their contribution to emerging practices of mechanical, automated, and tool-driven production. Rather surprisingly, little attention has been given to one of the key features of additive manufacturing (AM): the shaping of 3D form. This chapter addresses abstract concept creation in the early phase of design and its potential for exploring relations between form, aesthetics, and AM. Earlier industrial design, now generally labeled "product design", provides core models upon which to not only build but also extend experimentation and design work with AM tools and technologies. The evolution of form (EoF) model is relevant because of its qualities concerning the facilitation of how form may be explored.
