Front’s Anna Lindgren and Sofia Lagerkvist have unveiled three 3D-printed vases that were designed by artificial intelligence based on their two-dimensional drawings.
The Swedish designer duo has trained a generative artificial intelligence (AI) program to translate their sketches into three-dimensional objects without using text prompts.
They presented the latest results in the exhibition AI: Brilliantly Bad! at Nordiska Galleriet during Stockholm Design Week.
AI designed the vases based on two-dimensional sketches produced by Front
Lindgren and Lagerkvist chose the show title to highlight the mistakes, biases and unpredictability that AI brings to the design process, in addition to the benefits.
“We use AI not as an efficient tool to achieve perfection, but for the opposite reason: because it is brilliantly bad at design,” said Lindgren.
“We embrace the glitches and faults in AI processes and invite AI in as a creative partner.”
For the exhibition, Front presented the three vases alongside the sketches they were based on.
The first comprised a cluster of four vessels “created for a world without gravity” – the arrangement appeared to be unevenly weighted, with all the vases at different levels and one turned upside down.
This design was based on a pencil drawing of four separate vases.
The second design was an asymmetric trophy vase. It had a human face, even though that was never a part of the original watercolour drawing.
“Just like a human mind, the AI anthropomorphically reads a face into objects,” Lagerkvist told Dezeen.
The third design, based on an abstract geometric watercolour, featured fragments of familiar objects. Front likened it to “an abstract robot with a baseball cap”.
“The result shows how AI platforms are trained on objects from the gaming world,” Lagerkvist said.
“The AI often added shapes and aesthetic references from unexpected places. The result was often robots, helmets or weapons, and the aesthetic steered more towards a kind of steampunk look than the graphic pattern that was the original input.”
With these three objects, the Front duo hoped to show creative similarities between AI and the human mind, offering clues as to how designers might collaborate with AI in future.
“It is fascinating to explore AI models’ own creative processes: their randomness, their inability to follow simple instructions, their way of borrowing aesthetic references from unexpected places,” said Lagerkvist.
“All these behaviours mimic what we think of as a human creative mind.”
The project raises question marks over design authorship, a topic that has underpinned Front’s work since the launch of the studio in 2003.
Early projects include Design by Animals, a project featuring wallpaper knawed by a rat and hooks shaped by snakes, and Sketch, a series of 3D-printed furniture based on motion capture.
Lindgren and Lagerkvist first experimented with AI in 2021 when working on Design by Nature, a project that saw them 3D scan textures from the natural world and turn them into textiles.
The pair has worked with around 20 different AI programs since then, including well-known models like Chat GPT, Midjourney, Krea and Runway, as well as more specialised engineering programs.
“It made us analyse the grounds on which we base our creative decisions,” said Lagerkvist. “We found similarities and wanted to explore what it is within creativity that cannot be recreated by a machine.”
For this project, the Front duo trained their own AI model. This involved feeding it information and images of objects they had previously designed so it would learn their style and approach.
The designers see this as a long-term project. They are keen to collaborate with others in the field, to dig deeper into how AI will impact design.
“Soon, AI will be a part of every designer’s working process integrated into our existing tools or used in new ways we cannot yet imagine,” added Lagerkvist.
“We are curious and want to get to know and challenge our new colleague.”
AI: Brilliantly Bad! was on show at Nordiska Galleriet from 3 to 9 February as part of Stockholm Design Week 2025. See Dezeen Events Guide for more design exhibitions around the world.
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