Spaziofranco
My name is Francesco. For many years people called me Franco. Spaziofranco grew out of that name: my space, open to projects.
Introduction
My name is Francesco, but for many years I was Franco. This is my spazio franco, Italian for a free zone. Since 2004 it has been home to a website in Flash, a printer that worked through the night and a small shop. Today it gathers what they left behind. I haven’t yet decided what it will become.
I imagined it with no customs and no judgement: a space for my projects and for other people’s, open to whatever has yet to be born.
Contents
2004The first website
I’m an engineer’s son. At home, sitting at a VIC-20 among BASIC and program listings, I came to programming early. In middle school I wrote an address book for my friends’ phone numbers and addresses, with a binary search: computers were slow, and I was looking for ways to make them answer faster.
In 2004 I built my first website, to bring together my university projects. It was made in Flash. For me that meant being a designer and a programmer at once: imagining a movement, then building it, one instruction at a time.
On a burgundy background, a zebra crossing held the projects like postcards, each with its own year. One card was white and said only “Put your project here”: a place left free for someone else.
20153D printing
In 2015 my first 3D printer arrived: a second-hand Ultimaker 2. Going from a drawing to an object I could hold in my hand, right there on the studio desk, changed the way I worked. Sometimes a single night was enough to test an idea.
I opened it up and modified it one part at a time, until it became a 2+. It’s still here.
In the evening I would start a print; in the morning I would go back to see it. Like Christmas as a child, when you wake up before everyone else to see what’s under the tree.
Layer by layer
A layer view, as in Cura. In grey, the layers already laid down; in white, the one being printed.
- Already printed
- Current layer
- Infill
Hackability
With Hackability (opens in a new tab) ↗, 3D printing also became a tool for co-design. Designers, makers and people with disabilities work together on solutions for independence in everyday life. In 2020 Hackability received an Honourable Mention at the XXVI ADI Compasso d’Oro Award.
Back in the studio, the same machine let me build prototypes: holding an idea in my hand, weighing it up, changing it.
2020—2211 printed objects
In 2020 Spaziofranco became a small shop selling 3D-printed objects. It brought together ideas that had come out of nowhere and projects left in some company’s drawer. I offered the files too: among friends of friends, there’s always someone with a printer.
It was an experiment: I wanted to understand how e-commerce worked. I learned that it is a trade in its own right, and not mine. In 2022 I let it go. The objects, though, stayed.
Shop archive, 2020–2022. The objects are not for sale on this site.