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KAHLUMNA- UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
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READ THE FULL PROJECT HEREKahlumna is an open-source, modular cover system for transfemoral prosthetic users, designed to be fabricated on standard desktop 3D printers and shared freely through a digital platform. The project began from a simple observation: the prosthetics industry treats personalization as a luxury, when it should be a basic right. Frida Kahlo's lifelong reworking of her own medical devices, turning braces and prosthetics into objects of personal expression, became the conceptual anchor for the work, demonstrating that an assistive device can carry identity without compromising function. Through participatory co-design with two long-term prosthetic users, one an adult former para-athlete and one a teenager, the project developed a system built around a universal clamp, a customizable cover shell, an adjustable closure mechanism, and a framework for surface intervention, allowing each user to adapt the design to their body, their aesthetic preferences, and their fabrication access.
Rather than positioning itself as a finished product, Kahlumna functions as an open invitation, a manifesto against gatekept design as much as a physical object. The accompanying platform, Kahlumna.com, hosts tutorials covering text customization, pattern cutting, surface finishing through resin coating and wet sanding, and sizing guides for printable components, making the system reproducible by makers, clinicians, or users themselves anywhere with access to a desktop printer. The work is grounded in design justice principles, treating the people who live with these devices daily as collaborators rather than subjects, and argues that distributed digital fabrication can be a meaningful tool for democratizing access to prosthetic design on a global scale.