innovation

3D printing isn’t just the future, it’s the now. Musician Will.i.am and Coca-Cola are using 3D printing to create everything from headphones to iPhone cases out of recycled plastic bottles. A group of Dutch architects are 3D printing an entire canal house in Amsterdam out of plastic. And artist Diemut Strebe used a 3D printer to grow a living replica of Vincent van Gogh’s ear with DNA taken from the painter’s descendant Lieuwe van Gogh.

For mortals like you and me there is Labs 3D, a small shop in the Barri Gòtic. It is Barcelona’s first and only 3D printing store, run by brothers Juliano and Jorge Montoya. Here you can get the most unique holiday gift ever for that hard-to-buy-for loved one. To call it your own Mini-Me would be too Austin Powers. “3D selfie” is the preferred term.

To obtain your 3D selfie, Labs 3D first snaps 4,000 digital snapshots of you in the span of just ten minutes. They then begin 3D printing your miniature, polymer replica; two weeks later your 3D selfie is ready. A person measuring 180 cm tall (5 ft. 11 in.) can be reduced to 14 cm (6 in.) in the smallest version, costing 99 euros, or to 22 cm (9 in.) in the largest, for 270 euros, with three sizes in between.

As most of us are a little vain, Labs 3D can Photoshop the image before printing, for instance to remove those pesky love handles or airbrush blemished skin. An exact copy of oneself with the same dimensions would defy the laws of nature: a man and his double cannot exist in two places at the same time. So please, respect the order of the universe.