Selected workAlcova, Former SNIA Factory — Varedo, Italy

PORTAL.
Alcova, Milan.

At Alcova’s former SNIA factory, ten sculptural chairs and live robotic fabrication made a larger idea tangible: design can travel as information, while the object is produced where it lands.

Entrance view of colorful chairs and robotic equipment inside the PORTAL exhibition at Alcova.
Collection
Ten original chairs
Setting
Alcova / Former SNIA Factory
Creative direction
Charles Birshaw
Collaboration
Decibel × Vizcom × Caracol

Alcova / Former SNIA Factory

A factory reclaimed by nature.
Reactivated by making.

PORTAL was staged inside Alcova’s former SNIA textile factory, a post-industrial ruin overtaken by vegetation. Charles Birshaw’s exhibition design used the setting deliberately: digitally fabricated chairs and a working robotic cell set against broken concrete, daylight, and regrowth.

The contrast gave the project its central tension—new modes of production shown inside the remains of an old one, with nature already reclaiming the architecture around them.

Explore the current Decibel Editions collection.

Red, yellow, black, and green chairs displayed on illuminated plinths at PORTAL.
PORTAL’s chair collection appears against the raw concrete of the former SNIA factory—new objects framed by the traces of an older industrial world.

Design untethered

The idea travels.
The object is made where it lands.

The collection brought together ten original chairs by designers working across borders and disciplines. Several concepts were developed with Vizcom’s AI-assisted tools; others began through more traditional processes. What connected them was not a single aesthetic, but a shared digital path from concept to production.

Decibel developed geometry, materials, and print strategies for each piece, using Caracol’s robotic LFAM platform to turn very different design languages into full-scale furniture. In that sense, PORTAL’s name was literal: design moved as information, while the physical object could be produced locally.

Close-up of a yellow sculptural chair on an illuminated exhibition plinth.
One of PORTAL’s ten original chairs at full scale, where an individual design language meets a shared robotic production platform.
Detail of a green chair’s curved seat and branching base on an exhibition plinth.
A contrasting chair pushes the same manufacturing system in another direction, pairing a continuous seat with a branching base.
White sculptural chairs beside robotic fabrication equipment in Decibel’s workshop.
Before Milan, completed chairs sit beside the robotic system in Decibel’s New Jersey workshop—the collection at the point where fabrication becomes exhibition logistics.
A person working beside a translucent teal chair and robotic equipment at the PORTAL exhibition.
Before opening, the exhibition floor functioned as both staging ground and installation site, with furniture, crates, and fabrication equipment arriving into place together.

Live fabrication / Alcova

Production was not backstage.

Caracol’s Heron AM system operated inside the exhibition throughout the week, including the on-site production of the winning entry from Vizcom’s global furniture design competition. Visitors could watch a digital toolpath become layers of material and, over the course of the day, a full-scale chair.

Putting the machine in the room changed PORTAL from a static display into a living demonstration. The collection could be understood not only by what it looked like, but by how—and where—it was made.

Robotic fabrication system installed inside the industrial exhibition space at Alcova.
Caracol’s Heron AM system operating inside the former SNIA factory, returning active production to a space once defined by it.
Daytime view of the PORTAL exhibition with designer chairs and the live robotic fabrication cell inside the former SNIA factory.
By day, the finished collection and live fabrication cell occupied the same room—production and display deliberately held side by side.

Circular design / A different idea of luxury

Less about excess.
More about what the system makes possible.

PORTAL was conceived to question familiar ideas of luxury. The proposition was not simply a new surface finish or another recycled material; it was a different relationship between authorship, production, and place.

Digital files could travel instead of finished furniture. Recycled and bio-based materials could be selected piece by piece. Local, on-demand manufacturing could reduce the need to move bulky objects long distances. For Decibel, that points toward a broader circular system—one that depends on designers, manufacturers, material engineers, and customers working together, rather than sustainability being added at the end.

Visitors viewing colorful designer chairs at the PORTAL exhibition in the industrial Alcova venue.
Visitors move through the collection while the former factory remains legible around it—ruin, regrowth, and new production held in the same frame.
Visitor seated beside the enclosed robotic fabrication system and display screens at PORTAL.
The robotic cell remained part of the visitor experience, keeping the mechanics of production visible throughout the exhibition.

Collaboration: Decibel × Vizcom × Caracol. Exhibition design and creative direction: Charles Birshaw. Fabrication and production: Decibel. Robotic technology: Caracol.

Start with the idea.
Build the system around it.

Bring the concept, collaborators, and setting. We’ll develop the geometry, materials, and production path needed to make it real.

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