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The project physically consists of insect hotels—small facades inspired by architecture from countries where sloyd is part of the school curriculum, made by combining digital fabrication (3D printing, laser cutting, engraving) with traditional craft.

Untitled insect hotel with inspiration from Kuba, wood, Sara Rylander, Cindy Kohtala, Magnus Wink 2025. Untitled insect hotel with inspiration from Kuba, wood, Sara Rylander, Cindy Kohtala, Magnus Wink 2025. Untitled insect hotel with inspiration from Japan, wood, Sara Rylander, Cindy Kohtala, Magnus Wink 2025.

Pushing the Limits of Craft is an artistic research project that investigates the meeting point between digital fabrication and sloyd. Developed within Sloydlab at Umeå University, the work focuses on insect hotels designed as miniature dioramas, where each facade draws inspiration from architecture in countries where sloyd is taught as a school subject. By using techniques such as laser cutting and 3D printing alongside handcraft in wood, the project examines what happens when traditional craft values meet machine logic. Function remains central – the insect hotels are habitats for pollinators – but the material choices and expressions are shaped by the possibilities and constraints of digital tools.

The facades become metaphors for intangible cultural heritage: carriers of history, material knowledge, and local identity. Each architectural detail reflects how craft is understood in different cultural contexts, from Cuban reuse practices to Japanese precision. The project also raises questions about what is preserved, transformed, or lost when traditional techniques and cultural expressions are translated into digital form and relocated into new contexts. Architectural facades, once rooted in local histories and material conditions, are reinterpreted in another context through digital tools and inserted into the framework of insect hotels. In this process, cultural heritage risks becoming surface representation detached from embodied knowledge, yet it also opens possibilities for new hybrid forms of globalized aesthetics.

The project is a collaboration between the Department of Creative Studies and Creative Studies’ Sloydlab and the Umeå Institute of Design (UID). It received seed funding from UmArts as a Small Visionary Project. The installation Pushing the Limits of Craft was exhibited in the UmArts Summer Exhibition 2025, 11–18 June 2025, at the UmArts Research Studio.

This artistic research project investigates how digital fabrication reconfigures the values, functions, and processes of sloyd. Using insect hotels with facades inspired by international architecture as case studies, the project examines what is preserved, transformed, or lost when craft traditions are translated into digital form and relocated into new cultural contexts. The study shows how such translations reveal both the limitations of digital tools and the potential for new interpretations of cultural heritage within craft.