Code & Craft: Inside the new frontier of computational craft.

Can craft be both precise yet expressive, earthly yet digital, mechanic yet handmade?

Inside the ornate and historic Swiss Church in Covent Garden, Code & Craft by Cluster Crafts unites an interdisciplinary selection of contemporary artists, designers and architects exploring the modern day intersection between computation and craft.

Across the showcase, works reveal how algorithms, 3D printing technologies, and bio-fabrication processes are transforming not only how we make, but what we make. Clay is shaped through computational logic. Bioplastics are cast into forms that seem grown rather than built. Jewellery is generated from code, yet remains intimately connected to the body.

Within Code & Craft, an exhibition curated by Valeria Del Vacchio, making becomes a dialogue between control and chance, memory and innovation, the handmade and the mechanic.

Here we've selected some of our highlights from the showcase:

Lea Studios - Symbiotic Morphologies

Lea Studios is a research-led ceramic practice operating at the intersection of digital fabrication and manual forming methods. The studio crafts objects through a myriad of processes that combine parametric modeling, controlled extrusion, and decorative hand finishing.

Using clay as its medium, surfaces retain evidence of layering, retraction shifts, and tools - visible marks from both the human hand and machine. The studio's striking artworks reflect these traces as records of time, process, and spontaneous interaction - representing objects that are neither purely intuitive nor purely engineered.

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cera.LAB - Alveo & Doline

Developing custom 3D-printing tools that act less like machines and more like digital extensions of the hand, cera.LAB is a ceramic design studio at the intersection of digital experimentation and material craft.

Each tool is designed in-house, allowing cera.LAB to craft with nuance, variation, and intent - just like traditional artisans. The result is a body of work that represents a conversation between between clay and code, algorithm and accident.

Doline is a sculptural exploration of sandstone. This 3D-printed stoneware vase translates organic geological formations into a digitally crafted ceramic form, bridging the precision of computational design with the raw materiality of clay.

Alveo is a sculptural table inspired by bubbles and cellular growth. Marrying both hand and machine techniques, it captures movement in stillness - suspended between air, earth, and time.

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Duncan Carter - 10,000 Tiny Suns

Applying both coding and hand skill, Duncan Carter creates objects that are tactile and multisensory. Central to his practice is a life-long fascination with the underlying mechanics of our physical world.

Engrossed in science and technology at a young age, Duncan applied this technical knowledge to the arts and crafts, allowing him to understand and work with diverse behaviors such as paths of light, flows of liquid, natural structures and biological growth. These phenomena serve as both inspiration and medium for much of his work.

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Thomas Schmidt

Integrating digital fabrication and traditional techniques, Thomas Schmidt explores the evolving relationship between craft, materiality, and digital technology in the post-digital age.

Reframing craft as a site for technological innovation rather than a static preservation of analogue processes, Thomas' work highlights the interconnection between craft and technology, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship with materiality, space, and technological mediation.

"My work examines how materiality can bridge the gap between virtual experience and tactile reality. Through 3D scanning and printing, mold-making, casting, and image transfer, I investigate how ceramics can mimic, distort, and reinterpret material surfaces, questioning how digital processes shape our perception of the physical world".

Using 3D modelling software as a kind of digital sketchbook, The Morphology Series is a collection of forms that are translated into clay, where the physical process introduces new textures and possibilities.

Grounded in earth tones from globally sourced clays, the series reflects a balance between material history and innovation, reimagining ceramics for a contemporary context.

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Drag and Drop Studio - Python, Blossom & Swift

Madalin Gheorghe is a Romanian designer with a background in computational design and robotic fabrication, graduating from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he was part of the Wonderlab research group.

His research focused on coding, high-resolution simulations, and robotic fabrication as tools for advanced design. Through his practice, Madalin explores the tension between digital precision and material unpredictability.

The co-founder of Drag And Drop - a Bucharest-based design and manufacturing studio with Dragos Sabareanu - the studio creates sculptural objects and bespoke commissions inspired by natural patterns and the way forms emerge through material behavior. Working with clay, recycled polymers and sustainable composites, the studio merges advanced 3D printing with material exploration in search for new aesthetics.

"I am drawn to moments when matter resists obedience and reveals its own logic of becoming." Explains Madalin. " My work is less about imposing order and more about listening to what materials and forces want to do.

"This balance between precision and chance shapes my process - clay loops falling into place, structures bending under their own weight, patterns surfacing as light catches texture. In this tension between intention and unpredictability, the potential for new aesthetics emerges."

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Explore the full exhibitors line-up for Code & Craft here.