Two Factories, One File: 3D-Printed Benches at Coachella 2026

Caracol and Decibel Made pulled off a logistical first at Coachella 2026. The Italian robotics manufacturer and the New Jersey design studio produced 30 large-format 3D-printed benches for the SKYLRK OASIS installation by running the same file simultaneously in two locations. The benches traveled as data, not as parts, and arrived at the festival already built.

Each bench stretches nearly seven feet long. Arranged in circular clusters up to 13 feet across, they wrap around palm trees at the center of the installation, creating a continuous landscape rather than discrete seating. A 360-degree electronic screen surrounds the whole setup, so content moves around visitors on every side. The effect is more like entering a room than sitting on a bench.

The geometry is what makes the project interesting. Those multiplanar organic surfaces would be brutal to tool conventionally. Molds and dies do not handle that kind of complexity well, especially at this scale. Robotic large-format additive manufacturing made the shapes practical by removing the tooling step entirely. The benches are hollow and lightweight but engineered for heavy pedestrian traffic and long-term outdoor exposure.

Material choice matters here too. The benches were printed in recycled PETG GF from Airtech, reclaimed from industrial waste streams. The material is UV-stable, weather-resistant, and fully circular. At end of life the benches can be shredded and reprinted into new forms, which is a sensible answer to the festival industry's disposable architecture problem.

Caracol CEO Francesco De Stefano framed the project as a proof of model, not just a proof of object. The company opened a 6,000 square foot U.S. headquarters in Austin last September and can assemble up to 100 robotic LFAM systems a year. The Texas half of the SKYLRK run came from that facility. In July Caracol went the other direction too, partnering with Designtech and LAMÁQUINA to open Milan's first permanent LFAM hub for the design sector.

The distributed production angle is the real story. Rather than shipping tooling or moving finished parts across the country, the design file traveled and manufacturing stayed local. That cuts logistics costs and carbon footprint, and it means capacity can follow demand instead of the other way around. Addidex Connect identified exactly this as distributed production's bottleneck: making sure a process validated in one location yields the same part in another. Decibel proved it works across two states on a festival deadline. The industry is still working out how to guarantee it at scale.