Zaha has Hadid with 3D printing

London's Design Museum has just had an exhibition of 3D printing and additive manufacturing. On show and in operation were a number of machines that looked like microwave ovens, producing various shapes out of extruded plastic. On the face of it there wasn't much to get excited about. From a design, created on the laptop computer alongside, the machines were somewhat painstakingly making little blue or red plastic crocodiles, the sort of thing you might find in a lucky packet or a box of breakfast cereal. Given the billing as 'The Future is Here' this all didn't really seem to measure up. But this is a technology that's already being used in the manufacture of aero parts and body organs. The Great Ormond St Hospital for children near Russell Square is home to loads of R&D which has already embraced the new tech. For example, researchers have designed and 3D-printed a replacement trachea for a small boy, grown a new trachea around it using stem cells, which in turn became a living organ as the plastic dissolved. This is only one of a host of such projects. As the costs of 3D printing fall and sophistication of the soft- and hardware increases, it will become increasingly ubiquitous. Much like the personal computer which was regarded as something of an oddity when it first appeared on the scene, this technology will within the next generation become a fixture in the home, changing the way we produce and consume things. Needless to say, today's factory is also likely to be revolutionised, with all the turmoil in labour relations that will entail. The Design Museum building itself has recently been acquired by Zaha Hadid, the new star of London's modernist architecture fraternity, born in Baghdad. The QSL is from Radio Baghdad, heard in Cape Town back in 1968 on the 31mb.