Central Saint Martins graduate Noé Chouraqui has developed Point, a 3D-printed tennis ball made from bio-based, recyclable filament. The balls maintain the traditional neon-yellow appearance and ringed design of conventional tennis balls but use plant-derived PLA-HR filament instead of the standard hollow rubber core covered in felt.
Chouraqui created Point as his final year project in the Product and Industrial Design course at CSM. He identified sustainability as a key concern, noting that over 300 million tennis balls are produced annually worldwide, with each ball taking 400 years to decompose.
“The balls are made from a filament called High Resilience PLA (PLA-HR) – it is a bio-based and recyclable filament made from plant-derived materials, primarily corn starch,” Chouraqui told Dezeen. “PLA-HR is eco-friendly, as it is compostable under industrial conditions and has a lower carbon footprint than traditional plastics.”
The designer maintained the recognizable visual elements of traditional tennis balls for practical and regulatory reasons. “It was crucial to preserve the characteristic features of tennis balls so that the product would immediately be identified as a tennis ball, rather than just any other ball,” he said. The fluorescent yellow-green color adheres to International Tennis Federation (ITF) standards, which only recognize tennis balls in this color.
Point balls underwent official testing by Jamie Capel Davies, Head of Science and Technical at the ITF. The findings indicated that the aerodynamic performance of the 3D-printed balls closely matches that of traditional tennis balls. According to Chouraqui, the ITF Technical Commission is currently reviewing Point’s data and considering regulatory adjustments to potentially accept sustainable alternatives in official matches.
Source: dezeen.com