There are projects you come across and immediately think: this needed to exist. Michael Molitch-Hou‘s Impossible Works: The Book of 3D Printed Art is one of them.
I haven’t met Michael in person (yet). Our industry is “vast”, and sometimes the people who shape it most are the ones you know through their work before you ever share a room with them. And I have seen his work. And those in my network who have met him are consistent in their testimony: he is the real thing. A journalist, writer who has covered additive manufacturing for over 13 years. With such years of experience, you inevitably grow with the industry and understand it from the inside.
That depth shows in the ambition of this project.
Impossible Works moves away from the dominant narrative of AM as purely an industrial tool. Although that perspective is valid and important, it often makes us overlook the common thread in how the technology transforms art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, medicine, and even food; each revealing its own specific peculiarities.
Michael’s book sets out to highlight that. Structured around approximately 52,000 words and more than 350 images, it spans disciplines and industries, tracing the moment when 3D printing moved from prototyping into museum collections, into couture, into clinical applications, into spaces where creativity and manufacturing blur into something harder to categorize.
That cross-disciplinary scope is exactly what makes the book significant. It doesn’t treat 3D printed art as a niche. It treats it as a lens through which to understand what this technology has actually made possible.
The production details reinforce that seriousness. The book is planned as an offset-printed, Smyth-sewn hardcover on high-quality coated stock; a physical object made with intention.
A digital edition is targeted for December 2026, with physical copies expected in February 2027.
And if you’re a true AM enthusiast, the Founders’ Edition will probably catch your attention: a limited run of 75 copies, each featuring a 3D printed cover.
The campaign is running on Kickstarter. If you have ever believed that additive manufacturing is more than a production tool; that it carries within it a different kind of creative possibility; then this is the book you’ve been waiting for someone to write. Go back it.
Support the Impossible Works Kickstarter campaign here
