Most 3D-printed concrete you have seen is a wall. The technology arrived through construction, and construction wants flat layers, vertical surfaces, predictable geometry and no surprises. The resulting aesthetic — those regular horizontal ribs, like a very large coil pot — has become the signature of the process, and it is a signature of its constraints rather than its capabilities.
Matyáš Chochola, a Czech artist, working with the Czech company Voxell, has made three sculptures that look nothing like that.
The works
BRUTALIST, METEOR and MACE II — each three to four metres tall and weighing around one tonne, at Frieze Sculpture 2026 in The Regent’s Park, London, until 1 November 2026.
- BRUTALIST combines a deconstructed classical column with twentieth-century architecture
- METEOR draws on cosmic and geological form
- MACE II references Brutalist architecture and 1980s science fiction
The stated reference set is Antiquity, Cubism, Brutalism and mythology, which is a wide net and, judging by the descriptions, a deliberate collision rather than a blend.
The four technical decisions
Per designboom’s account, the method uses different orientations, non-planar paths, large overhangs supported by lightweight clay aggregate, and programmed irregularities. Each of those is a departure from standard practice and each solves a specific problem.
Non-planar paths. Standard 3D printing slices a model into flat horizontal layers. Non-planar printing lets the toolpath move in three dimensions within a layer — the nozzle rises and falls as it travels. The result is that the layer lines follow the form rather than cutting across it, which removes the stepped-contour look entirely and lets a curved surface read as curved rather than as a stack of discs.
Different orientations. Printing a piece in more than one orientation, or printing sub-parts at the angle that suits them, means you are not forced to resolve every overhang from a single build direction.
Clay aggregate supporting overhangs. This is the clever one. Concrete printing has almost no overhang tolerance — fresh concrete has very little green strength and will slump or tear away from an unsupported edge. Plastic printing solves this with soluble or breakaway support material; concrete printing usually just avoids overhangs, which is why printed architecture is so vertical.
Using lightweight clay aggregate as sacrificial support is the concrete equivalent: pack a cheap, soft, removable material under the overhang, print on top of it, and dig it out afterwards. It is the kind of solution that sounds obvious and is not, because it has to be soft enough to remove and stiff enough to hold a tonne of wet concrete.
Programmed irregularities. Deliberate deviation written into the toolpath. This is the artistic decision inside the technical ones. A printer’s natural output is too regular — the regularity is what makes printed objects read as manufactured. Introducing controlled noise into the path gives the surface variation that the eye reads as hand-made or weathered. It is the same move as adding jitter to a generative drawing, applied at architectural scale.
And then they finished it by hand
After printing, the concrete undergoes grinding, carving and polishing, with glass, bronze, brass and pigments added by hand.
This is the part that makes the whole thing work and the part most digital-fabrication projects skip.
A printed object straight off the machine is a blank, not a finished sculpture. Treating it as finished is what gives so much digital fabrication its characteristic unresolved quality — the form is interesting and the surface is raw, and the eye reads process rather than object.
Grinding and carving into printed concrete is a genuinely good combination because it exposes the aggregate and reveals the internal structure of the print, which is more visually interesting than its skin. And inlaying glass, bronze and brass puts material contrast and specular highlights against a matte grey body — which is how you get a four-metre concrete object to read in outdoor daylight rather than as a grey mass.
The lineage is honest about itself: this is digital fabrication as a roughing operation, followed by traditional sculpture. Which is exactly how stone carving has worked for a century — pointing machines and pneumatic tools rough out the block, and the hand does the rest.
Practical notes if this is your territory
Non-planar slicing is available to you. It is no longer research-only; there are non-planar post-processors and slicer plugins for FDM printing, and the geometry is the same problem at any scale. If you print anything with curved surfaces, this is the single biggest available improvement to how it looks.
Think about sacrificial support in your material. The clay-aggregate trick generalises: for any paste-extrusion process — clay, concrete, ceramic, even icing — the question is what cheap material is soft enough to dig out and strong enough to hold the overhang.
And budget for finishing. Most people building with these processes allocate time for the print and none for what happens after. The ratio here is clearly the other way round.
On visiting: designboom does not state admission. Frieze Sculpture has run as a free public display in Regent’s Park in previous years, but confirm before travelling.