Residence New York Alma mater Pratt Institute | Website francisbitonti.com | |
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Books 3D Printing for Fashion: An Introduction to Coding Couture | ||
Makerbot stories francis bitonti studio
Francis Bitonti (born 1983) is an American designer and artist based in New York City. He is most known for designing a 3D printed gown for Dita Von Teese, and for Mutatio, a 3D printed shoes collection he launched in collaboration with United Nude.
Contents
- Makerbot stories francis bitonti studio
- Interview with francis bitonti at wmf2015 makerfaire
- Early life and education
- Career
- References
Bitonti uses 3D printing technology and selective sintering to create functional fashion wear and accessories. He is the founder and principal of the eponymous Francis Bitonti Studio.
Interview with francis bitonti at wmf2015 makerfaire
Early life and education
Bitonti was raised in East Moriches, New York. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Long Island University and completed his Masters of Architecture from Pratt Institute in 2007.
Career
After completing this education, Bitonti started working as an architect. In the mid-2000, he collaborated with New York designer Katie Gallagher. He founded Francis Bitonti Studio in 2007, when he became a finalist in a design competition, hosted by the New York City Department of Transportation, Google, and The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, for a 3D printed back rack he created. He worked for American Designer Vito Acconci from 2008 to 2010.
In 2013 he began working with designer Michael Schmidt to make a 3D dress for Dita Von Teese. The dress was debuted in March 2013. It received a lot of media attention and became one of Bitonti's best known works. The dress was a Fibonacci sequence-inspired gown, 3D-printed in nylon. It had 3,000 moving joints.
Bitonti launched The Cloud Collection, a product line produced entirely by cloud manufacturing, in 2014. The cloud collection offered the code for four items that were part of the collection. Buyers could purchase the code and get it 3D printed after making changes in the design.
In 2015, he made the Fiber Table, which became the first functional 3D printed metal furniture. In September, Bitonti launched a shoe collection called Mutatio, in collaboration with United Nude. The collection included different 3D-printed heels shaped using algorithms. The shoes combined leather uppers with latticed platform heels, which were made from nylon using a selective laser sinter (SLS) machine and then plated with gold. Each pair of heels features a slightly different mesh pattern, generated by tweaking a computer algorithm.
Bitonti conducts New Skins Workshops, a 10-day class that covers the topic of computation design for fashion. The workshop was launched in 2013. As part of a workshop, Bitonti and the students created two dresses, the Verlan Dress in July 2013 followed by the Bristle Dress in January 2014.
Bitonti’s work has been published in the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the Museum of Arts and Design. Reviewing his work, Wired wrote that “Bitonti is ushering in a new manufacturing paradigm through his blend of computational design techniques and emerging manufacturing technologies.” He was one of thirteen WIRED2015 Innovation Fellows.