3D-Printed Dune Chess Set by Rory Noble-Turner

Harnessing the latest advancement in Quartz 3D-printing, the Dune Chess Set attempts to create an engaging tactile experience for players whilst capturing sand in its purest, elemental form. 

3D-Printed Dune Chess Set

Chess is a game that feels as old as time. When we play, there is a sense we are tapping into an experience people have shared for thousands of years. As an architect intrigued by intricate, tactile forms, the sculptural qualities of chess pieces and their archetypal silhouettes had been a subject of fascination for some time. 

As a dynamic, ever-shifting natural resource, the elusive nature of sand seemed a fitting material for a game that evolves gradually and unpredictably over time. With each move, tactical repercussions ripple outward, disrupting and reforming an evolving field of play.

It seemed a fitting challenge to take the material as formless and fluid as sand and mold it into something solid and robust whilst maintaining a sense of transformation and potential.

Design Process of the Dune Chess Set

As a designer, Rory Noble-Turner is interested in the tactile qualities that such a granular material can offer and how this can subvert the traditional notion that luxury objects must generate appeal through pristine finishes and polished surfaces intended to be seen and not touched.

By using 3D sculpting tools typically reserved for the visual effects industry, he was given an enormous degree of creative freedom and control when it came to crafting the final product. A major challenge was refining the digital scripts required to generate the rippled textures. What seemed like a relatively straightforward exercise became increasingly complicated as he tried to fine-tune the degree of rippling randomness, its varying density and depth, and the gentle fall-off as it blended into a smooth surface. To create such a natural – or windswept – appearance required months of dedicated problem-solving and refinement, with a couple of solutions being discovered only after delving deep into the depths of visual scripting forums.

For a chess game to function effectively, you must clearly differentiate between both opposition pieces and the alternate spaces on which those pieces play. In a mono-material set such as this, a binary contrast between rippled and smooth surfaces (reflective of the contrasting states of sand) becomes the primary signifier of this difference.

Broader Explorations Into Touch and Sensation

As we increasingly spend time jabbing at keyboards and swiping at screens, our sense of touch – and, for that matter, the sensory perception of our bodies – declines, replaced instead by a disembodied and primarily visual engagement with our devices.

Amidst this decline of everyday physical sensation, the Dune Chess Set represents an investigation into themes of tactility and intimacy in an attempt to catalyze connection between users, their bodies, and the world around them. Therefore, the perceived experience of touching my work – or at least the triggering of a desire to touch – becomes a crucial factor in the design’s success, as well as its visual appeal.

Photographer: Rory Noble-Turner
Software Used: Rhinoceros3D, Grasshopper3D

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