#distributed design #open-source #citizen innovations #making in chaotic times #design-it-together
Newsletter No.2
02/12/2024
Free University of Bolzano
MA Eco-Social Design
Research semester
Author & designer:
Maximilian Carl Stahl
Audience:
Academia, friends & family
Write, Reply ✍️😉
Visit @OpenFab Maker Space in Brussels, Belgium 🤖
Navid O´Lari, maker & escape game designer showed me around the OpenFab, which is mainly focused on game design. In a short talk he shared his opinion on the maker movement and its role in society. He believes Maker Spaces could & should be more political in their activities.
“It's not just about the machines, it's also about the community and the skills. The lab is not just a place for expensive machines, it's also a place for expensive skills. […] Also I believe on the inside, there should be more political discussions in the FabLab community on what actually our goals are.” Navid
⬈Fig. 1, Play test of Navid´s escape game, demonstrating diverse manufacturing methods of a FabLab (photo of the author)
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FabLabs (Fabrication Laboratories) are public Maker Spaces that democratice technologies (e.g. laser cutters, 3D printers, sewing machines, hand tools) and make them accessible inexpensively to everyone.
There are 2000+ FabLabs worldwide. Places where innovations are born out of curiosity, experimentation & mutual learning between makers, that use them.(⬈1“The Fab Foundation”)
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Conversations with medicine student Inga & nursing student Fabio in Bolzano, Italy 🏥
To find out more about ****the ingenuity of practitioners in the medical sector (⬈2 makernurse.com) I spoke to aspiring health care workers with practical experience. I discovered several insights into the daily routine in a hospital - including pragmatic problem-solving (can that be called **Design Thinking?).
“If there is no tourniquet available for taking blood, you may have to use a rubber band or the patient may have to pressurize their own blood flow. If there are no alternating pressure mattresses or electrically adjustable beds, you need to imitate their function and regularly change the patient's position with blankets and pillows, for example. In these situations, the nurses are probably the ones whose improvisational skills are most in demand.” Inga
⬈Fig. 1, The Glia Tourniquet, 3D-printable Open-Source solution for stopping blood flow
Interview with Ivan, former “Tolokar” driver from Lviv, Ukraine 🚐
After the full-scale invasion into Ukraine began in 2022, multiple Tolokars - mobile Maker Spaces in vans - started touring the country. Hands-on repairing & (re)building events supported interested locals. The activities were aimed at self-empowerment by providing tools of distributed manufacturing including open-source design, CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) and other tools specific to the maker movement(⬈3 tolocar.org). Thanks to the equipped vehicles, events even in remote areas became possible and tried to connect isolated makers.
"The idea of the maker community sharing these technologies in Ukraine was to test how for example computer-aided manufacturing could be helpful in a crisis. But we found very few areas where they were helpful […] Instead, the equipment was mainly used for educational workshops and creating spaces for communities, like furniture and maker spaces.” Ivan
⬈Fig. 2, Ivan making bicycle racks in Kyiv region in Feb 2023
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Everybody can be a maker/designer, we just need reasons for it! (⬈4 engineeringathome.org)
There are plenty of maker spaces → one thing that is sometimes missing among classic makers is a social perspective.
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Successful projects need understandable purposes and missions in order to be communicated clearly to participants or stakeholders. insight from Tolokar
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⬈Fig. 3, A simple workaround to use a laptop in bed, by Ganeshswami99, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Low-Tech solutions often arise out of necessity. Plato once said: “our need will be the real creator”. One form of non-conventional innovation, from the Indian subcontinent is called ´Jugaad´, which stands for solving problems in the shortest possible time with minimal investment and material effort.
While the outcomes are astonishing it should not be romanticised. Such inventions often arise out of necessity and their creators probably would prefer different circumstances. (“‘Jugaad’, India’s Most Overrated Idea” 2018) ⬅️ Photo
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“You can't delegate the improvement of the world, you have to do it yourself.” (Harald Welze 2022)
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