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Advances in design software mean "materials are becoming media"

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See more architecture and design movies on dezeen.com/moviesnnNew technologies mean the design process is becoming akin to "creating a Holly...

See more architecture and design movies on dezeen.com/moviesnnNew technologies mean the design process is becoming akin to "creating a Hollywood film," says designer Francis Bitonti, who created a seamless 3D-printed dress for burlesque dancer Dita von Teese.nnSpeaking about the development of the dress at the Wearable Futures conference in London in December, Bitonti says that developments in computer-based design and 3D printing mean that designers are no longer limited by their knowledge of materials.nn"The separation between what you can simulate and what you can physically model is gone", claims Bitonti, founder of New York luxury fashion studio Francis Bitonti Studio.nnVon Teese premiered the 3D-printed dress designed by Bitonti and designer Michael Schmidt at the Ace Hotel in New York in March last year and it became one of the most talked-about fashion stories of the year.nn"One of the things we’ve been noticing is that materials are becoming media. I’m not operating on materials, I’m operating on animations, I’m operating on video, I’m operating on pixels and polygons. [The design process] is a lot closer to creating a hollywood film than it is making an aluminium cylinder," says Bitonti.nnPossibilities are now limited by the designer’s imagination rather than material constraints, Bitonti says. "What I’m finding every day is that I can make anything I can draw. And I can make something behave any way I can imagine it behaving. The gap closes every day."nnPrior to launching Francis Bitonti Studio, Bitonti trained as an architect. He says this background proved useful when designing the figure-hugging dress for the American model and burlesque dancer Dita von Teese.nn"I found that developing a second skin for the body wasn’t really that much different from thinking about a building facade. It’s about breaking up shapes in pretty much the same way," he says.nnThe seamless dress, which he developed last year, was made out of 3000 unique moving parts made using selective laser sintering (SLS), where material is built up in layers from plastic powder fused together with a laser.nnThe two-day Wearable Futures conference explored how smart materials and new technologies are helping to make wearable technology one of the most talked-about topics in the fields of design and technology.   Less