In November 2015 we started the project of the Ex-Designer Project Bar in an empty space on Calle Entença in Barcelona. Over the years, the space was constructed using three 3D printers to eventually create walls, a bar, lights, posters, letters, stools, glasses, plates and cutlery. All elements were digitally drawn and printed with additive printing technology in grey corn-based PLA. Plates and glassware were produced in colorless gastronomy-grade PLA.

The project meant printing the space even as the bar being open for business, with standard opening hours and times booked for events, conferences and performances.

The original plan was to finish in 2017, to coincide with the 20-year anniversary of my first exhibition, SPAMT + Techno-Tapas in Galería H2O in Barcelona. This was to include the finished interior of the bar and to convert the 3D printers to subsequently produce food, the bar snacks.

In 2017, at the DS20Y17' exhibition held at the Galería H2O to commemorate these 20 years, Digital Spamt was presented. It was a 3D printed version of the mythical SPAMT, but the project was not entirely successful. We concluded that it wasn’t possible to print healthy and tasty snacks for a normally operating bar with any regularity or predictability. In 2019, Digital Nachos, made by 3D printing corn flour, were presented, but the results were generally unsatisfactory and required an outsized effort.

Not only were there problems relating to 3D printing food, but the bar itself had fallen behind schedule and was only 37% complete.

The bar interior was finished in February 2020, at the time when the pandemic was spreading around the globe. Lockdown began and forced the bar’s closure, and it remains closed.

The Ex-Designer Project Bar is finished and an inauguration is forthcoming.



Photo Inga Knölke 2020