Speaking of Droog, counterintuitively, the most exciting thing at the Droog Design for Download show in Milan were a few electrical outlets by EventArchitectuur, tiny in comparison to reconfigurable flat pack furniture systems also on show. For us, though, they exhibited the most potential, moving away from modularly assembled cut out shapes (however striking) into a more sculptural expression of customizable, on-demand technology, addressing a very simple concept: "With 3D printing, even the most mundane mass-manufactured objects become a matter of choice."

This is not to discredit the furniture work by EventArchitectuur and Minale-Maeda, however. Both firms found ways around the mundane-ness of CNC-ed flat stock, through surprising applications of color, 3d printed connections, and odd and awkward configurations, as seen below.

The show searched for an instantaneous approach to manufacturing, with stations set up to customize furniture units and produce automated, downloadable instructions for production (yes, kind of like at the Container Store). A nice concept, but we would have loved to see a wider variety of manufacturing methods explored.