Abstract
Fab Labs, fabrication laboratories, are shared workshops where citizens can access digital fabrication equipment to design and make their own objects. They are proliferating rapidly and represent an alternative to mass production and consumption, an ideology whose environmental and social benefits their “makers” like to espouse. A longitudinal ethnographic study in a Fab Lab in a European design school examined the Lab’s ideology building, how ideals were enacted and where compromises were visible. Environmental issues were intertwined with other ideological concerns, but they were rarely promoted in their own right. Engagement with sustainability-oriented makers and stakeholders is recommended.
Highlights
Fab Labs, makerspaces and hackerspaces are varieties of community digital fabrication workshops where people use equipment such as laser cutters and 3D-printers to create their own artefacts
This study presented a community of designers promoting and practicing Open Design and simultaneously makers experimenting with digital fabrication
This study has shown how issues are rendered invisible in the dynamics between discourse and practice and has offered suggestions for ensuring more socially useful and environmentally aware production in these contexts
Summary
Fab Labs, makerspaces and hackerspaces are varieties of community digital fabrication workshops where people use equipment such as laser cutters and 3D-printers to create their own artefacts. “Personal fabrication” or “making” is often social and collaborative, entailing sharing and modifying of designs online, cooperation on projects and/or shared use of tools in shared spaces. These communities are forerunners in how they organize spaces and activities for digital fabrication. Fab Labs are the most organized makerspaces with the clearest identity; they are the target of the current study. As inquiry aligned with Social Shaping of Technology (Williams and Edge 1996) and Values in Design (Flanagan, Howe, and Nissenbaum 2008) research, it plays a role in making visible the often hidden values that guide how design and technology projects are conducted and that have sustainability implications
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