Think it. Make it.

The open makerspaces for digital fabrication in Hamburg and the metropolitan region.

As part of the interdisciplinary dtec.bw research project Fab City at the New Production Institute at the Laboratory of Production Engineering (Helmut Schmidt University), a new type of urban value creation is being established and scientifically investigated in the Hamburg metropolitan region by means of decentralized and open production workshops (so-called OpenLabs). Open Labs are technology labs that offer interested individuals, companies, and startups easy access to open-source and digital manufacturing machines (e.g., 3D printers, CNC mills, laser cutters). They also represent spaces for meeting, learning, experimenting, and collaborating in the context of value creation. The use of open source technologies (so-called open source hardware) in production offers the great advantage that users of a product have the right and the possibility to modify, build and sell it as they wish. In addition, one participates in a worldwide collaboration and the networking of actors, since the knowledge can circulate freely and thus be produced locally as well as decentrally.

By using open source hardware, OpenLabs contribute to the promotion of local innovation projects, supporting urban production, as well as the independence from global supply chains of the Hamburg metropolitan region, and promoting the development of technological education, thereby reducing the current trend of human alienation from value-creating actions. The OpenLabs established in the research project therefore simultaneously function as living labs for investigating possibilities for sustainable urban development and societal participation in socioeconomic and technologic development processes.