Design Map · Eindhoven
Remembering.LILO
Graduation project by Valerio Arsenio at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
The Utah Teapot is one of the most reproduced 3D objects in the history of computer graphics, used for decades as a standard test model for rendering systems. Yet the designer of the ceramic teapot it is based on, Lieselotte "Lilo" Kantner, was never credited in that story. Responding to this context, ‘remembering.LILO’ reconnects the digital teapot to its original creator. Through a custom-built program, archival records, biographical material and digital traces of Kantner are translated into parameters that modify and corrupt the 3D model. This generates a series of progressively distorted teapots, materialised as an array of 3D printed objects. Through this contamination, the Utah Teapot becomes a carrier of memory and evidence of authorship, revealing how digital design standards are built on invisible labour and appropriation.