Just a few weeks ago, Dutch designer Dirk Vander Kooij presented the latest iteration of his graduation project, Endless Flow, at Milan Design Week. His furniture, a collection of ergonomic, hollowed-out chairs and tables all made of the same candy-colored ribbed plastic, appears minimal but thoughtful, designed with the human body in mind. But the Endless process is really a globally-minded step towards sustainability. Vander Kooij employs a repurposed industrial machine to three-dimensionally print each chair, table, and lamp one by one, squeezing out a thin string of liquid plastic in layers like a soft-serve machine. Every piece is made of a single, coiled, “endless” string.

The practical benefits of the Endless process are many: there’s no casting mold involved, so there’s no discarded material. The chairs are made one at a time, so mistakes aren’t replicated across batches. And perhaps most importantly, the method uses 100% recycled plastic (Vander Kooij’s preferred medium is used refrigerator interiors). But from a designer’s point of view, the grace note of Endless Flow is that it allows the printer to watch a piece of furniture coming into existence, and to tweak it even as it is being created. Material waste is, after all, the product of a misplaced idea – Vander Kooij aims to cut down on intellectual waste as well.