This is not special or impressive. The video shows a triangle sketch following a closed curve, makes matching tangency seem like something special, then fast forwards to flattening the three faces of the resultant shape. It's like...uh... Yeah, so, possible forever, used regularly, what's the biggie?

These are even more beautiful in real life. I don't know why they didn't show it, but the same lab has also built a structure of tubes made of bamboo strips that arch up and over a seating area into a dome. The tubes start at planters and there are vines growing up onto the structure. It's my new favorite thing in my neighborhood. Thanks EPFL!

There are many more and interesting examples in the paper [1], which is open access.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3730933

Air ducts (mostly hidden in cavities or attics) could get some disruption from c-tubes. You'd glue the cut sections of flat polyprepylene into c-tubes. Not quite sure what the angle joiners would look like. They can't assume 90 degrees .. or can they for a subset of uses?

My only critique is that I expect there is a lot of "cut off" when they fabricate these flat pieces from rectangular stock. (I assume the shape of the pieces are not optimized for nesting within one another when laid out on the original flat stock — picturing all kinds of odd, curved scraps.) Presumably the cutoff material is recyclable though.

EDIT: many of the examples look "sectional" where, I suppose, if you reduce the shapes down to enough sections you can make better use of sheet stock — the tradeoff of course being you need to add more joints requiring fastening and perhaps loss of strength.

>"In the end, we intend to relieve designers from worrying about fabrication so that they can focus on aesthetics and function"

I will argue that the foremost problem in the discipline of design is that many don't 'worry about fabrication' enough.

A general solution to fitting flat material to 3d surfaces is available here:

https://laminadesign.com/

This software uses dynamic programing to minimize the bending energy needed to fit a ring of 3d points.