Design of the Week: Alu Vines Chair

By on October 6th, 2025 in Design, news

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The Alu Vines chair [Source: Peter Donders]

This week’s selection is the Alu Vines Chair by 3D designer Peter Donders.

Donders is a Belgian artist who has been making furniture designs since the 1980s. Donders is well-known for his tendency to experiment with unusual making methods and materials, including 3D printing.

The Alu Vines chair has to be one of the strangest chair designs ever seen. It’s wildly not straight, seemingly discontiguous and yet in spite of that it somehow vaguely reminds you that it is, in fact, a chair.

Views of the Alu Vines chair [Source: Peter Donders]

The structure seems quite spindly, and from several viewing angles it appears so different that it’s hard to believe it’s the same object.

Yet it is a chair, and you can actually sit on it.

Donders designed the chair as a 3D model, which was then 3D printed. The print was then used to create a mold, into which strong resin was poured. After curing, the chair was finished with red lacquer.

Here you can see the chair being 3D printed in an SLA machine. It’s from this print that the mold was created.

As for the name of the chair, I’m not sure what “Alu” means, but “Vines” is clear: the chair seems to be a tangle of vines that somehow becomes a chair.

Via Peter Donders

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!