Prestige goods house Louis Vuitton has become the first business in the world to deploy a 3D-printed major point-of-sale display in a shopping centre. Located in Sydney city’s prestige Westfield complex it was produced on the Massivit 1800 3D large format printer by OMUS over a punishing timeframe of two weeks.
The Sydney pop-up is conceived as an elephant that has wandered into Westfield shopping precinct and become wedged between pillars! The contours, positioning and form are hard to define but sit perfectly in the Westfield centre, focusing attention and magnetizing people to walk in.
Primary production was by Melbourne-based OMUS, the first company to install a Massivit 1800 in Australia. The schedule was so tight that OMUS had to call on the co-operation of a second Massivit 1800, recently installed at Composite Images in Sydney, as well as assistance of Massivit technicians flown in from Israel to work on the world-leading project. 48 sections of the spider-like dome structure were produced which consumed around 900 kilograms of Massivit Dimengel UV-curable material.
Once the 48 sections were printed, finished and joined, the architectural structure was wrapped onsite with Avery Supreme Silver wrapping film. “We only had 24 hours from set up to wrap the structure”. Stocks were limited and had to be airfreighted in to complete the job. OMUS installers, worked day and night to complete the printed structure within two weeks, and only three days to install. We were commissioned by Craig Billet from Gold Coast Displays who committed to using this technology to create the structure.
OMUS director Robert Grosso says: “This was really a take no prisoners job! Many fabricators had already said it could not be done within the time frame using conventional processes, but oversize 3D printing by Massivit came to the rescue. Our team had the immense task of breaking down the customer’s raw concept, and working out how to build the structure, design each of the files for production, and then work with a machine that has never tackled a project like this in the world. We could see, that we could make the structure to the designer’s specification, finish and install it but only if we pulled out all of the stops. With such a prestige brand as Louis Vuitton, it had to be right.”
Ever the perfectionist, Grosso still thinks it could be better, saying: “Given more time, we could have added more polish, tightened it up a little but we delivered within the timeframe and the customer is happy. No one else even thought it would be possible”.
Louis Vuitton’s logotype was added on using vinyl cut lettering and the elephant floor graphic was digitally printed onto Tex Walk floor grade vinyl and laid down.
“I think what this ‘bleeding-edge’ exercise has proven, “says Grosso, “is that oversize 3D printing can interpret and deliver a designer’s visions in a way that no other fabrication method can. Louis Vuitton’s boldness and faith also went a long way to making it a reality.”