Making things in Fab Labs: a case study on sustainability and co-creation

ABSTRACT

Digital fabrication laboratories (such as Fab Labs) are a global initiative of workshops that offer open access to technologies to produce objects from beginning idea to final production. Fab Labs encourage open and free knowledge-sharing among ‘experts’ and the general public. Claims are being made about community-based digital fabrication workshops transforming practices of design, innovation, production and consumption, while describing positive impacts on the environment and social goals. Research that examines such claims is sparse. This paper explores realities of using digital fabrication technologies within a Fab Lab. It draws on a case study that describes practical outcomes of a design workshop in which a multidisciplinary team engaged in issues of sustainable design and processes of co-creation to design and fabricate a prototype. This experience provides insight into the impact of digital fabrication technologies within a sustainable and co-creational design context and critical reflections are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Fab Lab
• sustainability
• co-creation
• digital fabrication technologies

Notes on contributors

Dr Katja Fleischmann is Associate Professor and Design Researcher at the School of Creative Arts at James Cook University, Australia. Her international experience gained while working in the UK, the USA and Germany as designer and design educator informs a variety of research interests, which include design methods as a tool for economic, public and social innovation; co-design processes and design pedagogy with particular focus on the future of design education. She holds a PhD (JCU), a Master of Fine Arts (Multimedia) from the University of Miami (USA) and a Bachelor in Communication Design (Germany).

Dr Sabine Hielscher has been working as a Research Fellow for the Science and Technology Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex since 2011. Her work focuses on the emergence and development of grassroots innovations in the context of community energy and community-based digital fabrication workshops. Prior to joining SPRU, Sabine completed a EPSRC funded PhD in Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University, examining the potential in applying an approach inspired by practice theory to everyday routines to inform sustainable design/consumption strategies.

Dr Timothy Merritt is an Associate Professor of Interaction Design in the IT Product Development BSc and MSc programme, which is a special joint offering by the Aarhus School of Architecture and the Aarhus University. He holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore where his thesis explored how and why people respond differently to artificial and human teammates in co-operative games. This extends to the broad focus of explorations with technology as a partner in creativity and human performance. His research interests are situated at the intersection of human–robot interaction and shape-changing interfaces.