Delicately delicious 3D-printed sculptures you can eat

The husband and wife duo behind The Sugar Lab creates wondrously intricate sculptures 3D printed out of sugar.

When they make 3D-printed meat look like this, we'll be impressed. These dainty sugar confections are the work of husband and wife team Kyle and Liz von Hasseln. They hit upon the idea when they wanted to make a birthday cake for a friend — but as graduate students, didn't have an oven.

After being awarded the very first Gehry Prize at their university, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, for developing a method of 3D printing that used UV light to cure photo initiated resin, they took their US$100,000 prize money and set up shop in Silver Lake, Los Angeles — to create 3D-printed confectionery.

"3D printing represents a paradigm shift for confections, transforming sugar into a dimensional, structural medium. It makes it possible to design, digitally model and print an utterly original sugar sculpture on top of a cake," the pair say on their website.

The sugar itself is printed in layers, with a water-and-alcohol mixture in between each one to wet and harden the sugar, holding it in place. Once it dries, the geometric constructions are quite rigid and can be used either by themselves as a dainty centrepiece, or with other food — as cake toppers, for example.

Their creations are impressive — not just for their stark, airy geometry, but because their shapes seem perfectly rendered. Perhaps the current limitations of 3D printing are defined not necessarily by the printer itself, but the material it uses to print.

See more of their creations on The Sugar Lab website.

Via www.psfk.com