In the last edition of the Maker Faire – The European Edition (Rome 2013), the FabLab Barcelona team presented several projects as part of their research in design (differents fields) based in digital fabrication. Along with the conference on Fab City by Tomas Diez.
The Maker Faire is the largest exhibition in the world dedicated to the innovation, creativity and enterprise, an event for families and lovers of the “Do It Yourself” spirit but also the celebration of the Makers movement the Maker Faire performance is not a competition, it makes visible projects and ideas that are often born in a garage or in a kitchen table. The sharing of ideas among creative people.
In the conference Tomas Diez eminently traced the story of innovation as related to technological improvements. He framed it in the overall history of development: from the renaissance to computers, from discovering the Americas to the internet. This served to introduce a clear picture of the current productive models: despite we have computers and the internet we still have a production based on centralised approach. Product In – Trash out. What if we add distribute production to the picture? We have a new model that is called Data in – Data out: that’s the vision behind Barcelona FabCity project. Is about trying to create distributed hubs of production.
As part of their research the FabLab Barcelona presented the following projects:
Smart Citizen: is a platform to generate participatory processes of people in the cities. Connecting data, people and knowledge, the objective of the platform is to serve as a node for building productive and open indicators, and distributed tools, and thereafter the collective construction of the city for its own inhabitants.
Prize Awards “Maker of Merit”
FabSkate: The aim of the Fab Skate project is to develop a system that will allow us to deliver fully customized, high quality skateboards and longboards for the price of an off-the-shelf model.
Skateboarding is as much about self expression as it is about technical skills or performance equipment, our goal is to provide all of the above through the development of a fully digital process. We rely heavily on digital fabrication techniques, from large format laser cutters to CNC mills.
FabTextiles: Is an investigation line within the FabLabBarcelona exploring the possibilities of digital fabrication available in a Lab applied on the field of textiles and wearables. Aims to educate and share knowledge through experimentation of different techniques.
Open Source Beehives: An open source beehive from FabLab in Barcelona. Has arduino with wifi (smart citizen kit) to track humidity, temperature, carbon monoxide. Can open and close vents to cool bees when needed. Hive design has been open source for over 100 years. Data sent to map so you can check hive health all over world.