The Story of MIT-Fablab Norway: Community Embedding of Peer Production

MIT-Fablab Norway was one of the first Fab Labs ever established, in northern Norway in 2002. Despite this auspicious beginning to a network that is rapidly growing, surprisingly little has been written about the genesis of the network or the Fab Lab itself. We therefore aim to contribute to this knowledge gap with a narrative account of our independent ethnographic research visits to the Lab. We combine our researcher perspectives, which are informed by, on the one hand, Aesthetics and a phenomenological understanding and, on the other, Science and Technology Studies, with Design Research bridging both. Our account aims to richly describe the Lab’s unique profile in the MIT Fab Lab network as a socially shaped entity and product of a particular time and place. Most salient in this narrative is the role of its charismatic founder, whose stories and metaphors become vehicles by which we come to understand how a Fab Lab forms its own identity, balancing the relationships with local stakeholders against those with the Fab Lab network; how it promotes certain principles and values of peer production; and how it represents itself to both maker insiders and outsiders. While situated and particular to this Lab, our interpretations may have implications for the trajectories of other Fab Labs and makerspaces, as well as our understanding of peer production as a new paradigm.Peer reviewe

Anticipated environmental sustainability of personal fabrication

Distributed manufacturing is rapidly proliferating to citizen level via the use of digital fabrication equipment, especially in dedicated “makerspaces”. The sustainability benefits of citizens’ personal fabrication are commonly endorsed. However, to assess how these maker practitioners actually deal with environmental issues, these practitioners and their practices need to be studied. Moreover research on the environmental issues in personal fabrication is nascent despite the common perception that the digital technologies can become disruptive. The present paper is the first to report on how practitioners assess the environmental sustainability of future practices in this rapidly changing field. It does so through an envisioning workshop with leading-edge makers. The findings show that these makers are well able to envision the future of their field. Roughly 25% of the issues covered had clear environmental implications. Within these, issues of energy use, recycling, reusing and reducing materials were covered widely by environmentally- oriented participants. In contrast, issues related to emerging technologies, materials and practices were covered by other participants, but their environmental implications remained unaddressed. The authors concluded there is a gap between different maker subcultures in their sustainability orientations and competences. Further research on the environmental aspects of real-life maker practices and personal fabrication technologies now could help avert negative impacts later, as the maker phenomenon spreads. This knowledge should also be directed to developing targeted environmental guidelines and solutions for personal fabrication users, which are currently lacking. Potential also lies in seeking to enhance dialogue between pro-environmental and new-technology-oriented practitioners through shared spaces, workshops and conferences.Peer reviewe

Collaborative futuring with and by makers

Maker spaces and maker activities offering access to low-cost digital fabrication equipment are rapidly proliferating, evolving phenomena at the interface of lay and professional design. They also come in many varieties and change fast, presenting a difficult target for, for instance, public authorities, who would like to cater for them but operate in much slower planning cycles. As part of participatory planning of Helsinki Central Library, we experimented with a form of collaborative futuring with and by makers. By drawing elements from both lead-user workshops and participatory design,we conducted a futuring workshop, which allowed us to engage the local maker communities in identifying the issues relevant for a public maker space in 2020. It further engaged the participants in envisioning a smaller prototype maker space and invited them into realising its activities collaboratively. Our results indicate that particularly the information about future solutions was of high relevance, as was the opportunity to trial and elaborate activities on a rolling basis in the prototype space. Insights about more general trends in making were useful too, but to a lesser extent, and it is likely that these could have been gained just as easily with more traditional means for futuring.Peer reviewe

Makespaces: From Redistributed Manufacturing to a Circular Economy

Redistributed manufacturing is an emerging concept which captures the anticipated reshoring and localisation of production from large scale mass manufacturing plants to smaller-scale localised, customisable production units, largely driven by new digital production technologies. Critically, community-based digital fabrication workshops, or makespaces, are anticipated to be one hothouse for this new era of localised production and as such are key to future sustainable design and manufacturing practices. In parallel, the concept of the circular economy conceptualises the move from a linear economy of take-make-waste to a closed loop system, through repair, remanufacturing, and recycling to ultimately extend the value of products and materials. Despite the clear interplay between redistributed manufacturing and circular economy, there is limited research exploring this relationship. In light of these interconnected developments, the aim of this paper is to explore the role of makespaces in contributing to a circular economy through redistributed manufacturing activities. This is achieved through six semi-structured interviews with thought leaders on these topics. The research findings identify barriers and opportunities to both circular economy and redistributed manufacturing, uncover overlaps between circular economy and redistributed manufacturing, and identify a range of future research directions that can support the coming together of these areas. The research contributes to a wider conversation on embedding circular practices within makespaces and their role in redistributed manufacturing

Call for Papers/Special Issue: 'Design contributions for the COVID-19 global emergency'

The 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic disease (COVID-19), appeared for the first time in Wuhan (Hubei Province, China) in late 2019 and rapidly spread in the rest of the world since the early months of 2020, has produced a significant and sadly dramatic impact in the life of all people. To date (April 22th, 2020), over 2.550.000 people have shown symptoms and over 175.000 died for health and respiratory problems. While the entire humanity feels dangerously powerless at the same time an unprecedented amount of initiatives across the world have shown human creativity and resilience. The entire scientific community is cohesive in facing this emergency and the severe health-related issues that have arisen in the last months. In this unparalleled scenario, the global Design community is called to act. And it is doing it! The new instances pointed out by the global emergencies allow reflecting to the ways the Design discipline can answer to unprecedented phenomena, with the will to foresee likely solutions in the long run from the lesson that we can learn in these months. At the same time, it is possible to immediately underline all bottom-up and top-down reactions that formally and informally are arising as conscious designed actions to solve the COVID-19 both at the small scales and at the large ones. There is a widespread perception that this worldwide crisis will change all aspects of our way of living and relating to each other. Governments, companies, NGOs, communities and individuals are already dedicating their time to reflect the future scenarios, devising solutions that can enable a transition to the new world that might come after the pandemic. Whilst contributing to the on-going challenges of the pandemic, the Design community can also contribute through its abductive reasoning, with propositions for new scenarios on the post-pandemic aftermath. The aim of this Special Issue of the Strategic Design Research Journal is to enrich the cultural and scientific debate by gathering and mapping all progresses produced in the COVID-19 emergency scenario and, then, to understand the role of the Design discipline in facing the complex global emergencies

Making community : the wider role of makerspaces in public life

Makerspaces—public workshops where makers can share tools and knowledge—are a growing resource for amateurs and professionals alike. While the role of makerspaces in innovation and peer learning is widely discussed, we attempt to look at the wider roles that makerspaces play in public life. Through site visits and interviews at makerspaces and similar facilities across the UK, we have identified additional roles that these spaces play: as social spaces, in supporting wellbeing, by serving the needs of the communities they are located in and by reaching out to excluded groups. Based on these findings, we suggest implications and future directions for both makerspace organisers and community researchers

Design Contributions for the COVID-19 Global Emergency (Part 2): Methodological Reflections and Future Visions

This is a landmark publication for the field of design. It was catalysed by unprecedented circumstances, as designers around the world had to rapidly deploy their competencies in strategic problem-solving to help humanity in the fight against an invisible enemy during a global pandemic. In alliance with other disciplines, from medicine to mechanical engineering, from computing to anthropology, designers everywhere have addressed the challenges and produced remarkable results through a diversity of initiatives. This Special Issue presents a peer-reviewed sample of these initiatives

New design challenges to widely implement 'Sustainable Product-Service Systems'

Sustainable Product-Service Systems (S.PSS) carry great potential to deliver social well-being and economic prosperity while operating within the limits of our planet. They can however be complex to design, test, implement and bring to the mainstream. To increase our understanding of the potential benefits, drivers and barriers in S.PSS design, the research community has been inspired to collect and analyse an extensive number of cases in diverse sectors and to develop and test several design methods and tools. This Special Volume on "New Design Challenges to Widely Implement 'Sustainable Product-Service Systems'" presents results of key studies in the following areas: user satisfaction and acceptance of S.PSS solutions, how industrial partnerships and stakeholder interactions can be designed for environmental and socio-ethical benefits, how knowledge of socio-technical change and transition management feeds S.PSS design processes, and the role of policy instruments to foster their implementation and scale-up. This Introduction reviews the current state of research and summarises the articles presented. The articles demonstrate increasing confidence in integrating approaches and theoretical frameworks from other arenas. These approaches include sociological practice theory, to shed new light on consumer practices in S.PSS configurations, and strategic niche management, to foster a suitable design and experimentation milieu. Experimentation, iteration and cyclical design processes were also seen by many authors as crucial to implementing and stabilising S.PSS solutions, but also their continuous sustainability evaluation. Several articles highlight the importance of local authorities, in developing S.PSS-enabling policies as well as supporting novel networks of stakeholders in the co-production of value. Finally this Introduction highlights key issues for a design research agenda, including but not limited to the development of new knowledge to support S.PSS designers (such as S.PSS design in low and middle-income contexts) and the role of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in the diffusion of knowledge and know-how to companies. Together, the papers in this special volume provide insight into the promise of the S.PSS concept for understanding, advancing and accelerating sustainability

The Sociomateriality of FabLabs : Configurations of a Printing Service or Counter-Context?

FabLabs can be studied as a technology- and product-oriented movement. In this study, I review material objects in European FabLabs as sociomateriality that represents and embodies the ways FabLabs are institutionalising. This refers to FabLabs’ relationships with incumbent institutions and how they impact the formation of norms and routines internally. Labs may adopt procedures familiar in mainstream organisations, borrowing from formal institutions in a quest for public inclusion and mainstream legitimacy, or they may seek to innovate in organisational structure, establishing themselves as informal institutions to maintain their counter-culture identity. Examining sociomateriality helps make visible how Labs manage the contradiction between 'openness' and recruitment of allies, and maintaining alterity. The studied FabLabs' institutionalising processes are ongoing, performative and heterogeneous, encompassing mixed tactics oriented towards both public inclusion (commodification and conforming) and counter-culture (reconstitution and transforming). We also propose that analysis conducted through three types of objects, work, knowledge and imaginative objects, provides a more articulated account of the tensions in material peer production

The Sociomateriality of FabLabs : Configurations of a Printing Service or Counter-Context?

FabLabs can be studied as a technology- and product-oriented movement. In this study, I review material objects in European FabLabs as sociomateriality that represents and embodies the ways FabLabs are institutionalising. This refers to FabLabs’ relationships with incumbent institutions and how they impact the formation of norms and routines internally. Labs may adopt procedures familiar in mainstream organisations, borrowing from formal institutions in a quest for public inclusion and mainstream legitimacy, or they may seek to innovate in organisational structure, establishing themselves as informal institutions to maintain their counter-culture identity. Examining sociomateriality helps make visible how Labs manage the contradiction between 'openness' and recruitment of allies, and maintaining alterity. The studied FabLabs' institutionalising processes are ongoing, performative and heterogeneous, encompassing mixed tactics oriented towards both public inclusion (commodification and conforming) and counter-culture (reconstitution and transforming). We also propose that analysis conducted through three types of objects, work, knowledge and imaginative objects, provides a more articulated account of the tensions in material peer production