The opening of Randy Rieland’s a Smithsonian post about MIT’s Skylar Tibbits, who aims to one-up 3D printing before it even becomes popularized:

“These days, 3D printing seems to be at the core of most new new research ventures, whether it’s developing ways to print entire meals or recreating facial features to repair a patient’s face.

But Skylar Tibbits wants to up the ante: He’s hoping 4D printing will be the thing of the not-so-far future.

The name for his concept, Tibbits admits, was a bit lighthearted at first. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tibbits and researchers from the firms Stratasys and Autodesk Inc were trying to come up with a way of describing the objects they were creating on 3D printers—objects that not only could be printed, but thanks to geometric code, could also later change shape and transform on their own.

The name stuck, and now the process they developed—which turns code into ‘smart objects’ that can self-assemble or change shape when confronted with a change in its environment—could very well pop up in a number of industries, from construction to athletic wear.”