The Distributed Design Platform acts as an exchange and networking hub for the emerging field of Distributed Design. The initiative aims at developing and promoting the connection between designers, makers and emerging digital and local markets.
About
The Platform will improve the connections among makers, designers and the market, providing thus tools, strategies, guides, contents, education, events, networks in order to enable them to commercialize their creations.
The Platform seeks to strength the creative community of Fablabs.io, the online social network of the international Fab Lab community with more than 13,000 registered users located in more than 40 countries and in more than 1,200 Fab Labs.
The production paradigm
Today, the products we buy usually travel thousands of kilometers before we can enjoy them. They are assembled in super-sized factories out of materials that often have to travel long distances before reaching the factory. These factories turn out mass-produced, highly standardized products, which leaves no room for individual customer needs nor the use of local resources or knowledge.
What if we could change this system? Reduce the ecological footprint of products, democratise the access to quality design and expand the market for designers, makers and manufacturers?
Distributed Design is a novel approach to design which utilises global connectivity to move data, instead of product. The approach rethinks how goods are produced and from what materials whilst aiming to enhance the customer’s relationship with their products.
What is Distributed Design?
Emerging at the intersection of the Maker Movement and design sensibility, Distributed Design provides a framework for designers, makers and creatives to innovate the field of design towards more sustainable, open, inclusive and collaborative practices. As global challenges intensify, shifting the global paradigm to support global connectivity and local productivity where bits travel globally, while atoms stay local becomes urgent. Distributed Design is a proactive response for makers and designs to prefigure viable design alternatives to the current paradigm that is designed for mass consumption.
The Distributed Design Platform was established in 2017, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union. It brings together a diverse member-base from cultural and creative institutions including Fab Labs, cultural organisations, universities and makerspaces. The Platform provides Europe-wide programming and opportunities to support emerging creatives working in the emerging field of Distributed Design.
Developing a platform ecosystem
To move data and enable local regenerative economies of materials and knowledge a powerful digital ecosystem is needed. Distributed Design Platform is committed to empowering, connecting and interoperating existing platforms that enable such global connectivity. We do this by incubating and supporting emerging platforms such as those below.
We love tech, but it won’t save us. As a platform, we also believe in the socialisation of technology such as digital platforms. We also develop programs to help distributed designers build their skills and knowledge of digital processes, in order for them to access the maximum benefit that these platforms offer.
We’re also concerned about how we can ensure fair remuneration and representation of makers and designers in the digital sphere. We’re undertaking dedicated research on the opportunities that exist in value-based certification and exchange online.
Membership
Distributed Design Platform founding members:
Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia | Fab Lab Barcelona
Pakhuis de Zwijger
P2P Lab
Re:Publica
Happy Lab Vienna
Danish Design Centre
Innovation Centre Iceland
Maker
Espacio Open
Politecnico di Milano – Polimi
Ars Longa
FabLab Budapest
Politecnico de Lisboa
OpenDot
Fab City Foundation
MAO
Global Innovation Gathering (GIG)
Community Hubs:
Design & Crafts Council Ireland
New membership to the Platform is considered yearly across multiple types of membership. For enquiries: [email protected]
Our Values
Collaborative
We promote of designers and makers who are working on collaborative approaches to product development and commercialization.
Sustainable
We promote sustainable production and consumption with a focus on: product distribution and fabrication, the application of ‘zero kilometre’ in supply chains, open source distribution and the circular lifecycle of products.
Open
We intend to open-up production and consumption behaviours, bringing transparency to the design and manufacture process, including by allowing access to processes through co-design and customisation as well as working with open design and innovative business models.
Ecosystemic
We promote an an ecosystemic approach to both online and offline tools which can connect designers, makers, manufacturers, and markets. We promote platforms and toolkits that help designers to go from idea to prototype, and from prototype to products and markets.
Advisory Board
The Advisory Board provides experience and knowledge to the development of the Platform. It meets two times a year with the members of the project, and where possible they also participate in other events organised by the Platform.
What impact?
The Distributed Design Platform values creations that are ecosystemic, sustainable, open and collaborative. Applying Distributed Design values contributes to building new pathways for sustainability in diversity and social justice, engaging civic leaders, makers, (digital) social innovators on societal change and transformation.
Some of the challenges of working on shift paradigms such as the Distributed Design concept and the idea to “design to distribute” are related to a pivot from the current economy to a spiral situated-innovation ecosystem, in which materials flow locally, within cities or bioregions, whereas information on how things are made circulates globally.
Such aim resonates with the concept of “cosmolocalism”, which emphasises the need of creations to be rooted in a place. Empowering individuals to become civic actors, or ‘prosumers’ blending the ‘consumer’ and ‘producer’ roles. Contributing with learning for emerging futures, incorporating a stronger emphasis on the use of convivial tools, learning-by-doing in education systems and curricula, and engaging all levels of future-making in finding solutions for local needs through distributed (human) agency, open-source software and hardware technologies, and sharing them with global networks.
📢 Engage on the making of such a collective impact.
Join the Distributed Design Impact Charter Pledge by replying to the 5-Question-Step PLEDGE below.
Indy is an architect, co-founder of 00 (project00.cc) and a Senior Innovation Associate with the Young Foundation and Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield.
Primavera is a permanent researcher at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, a faculty associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
Daniel is an educator, consultant and curator with an enquiring mind and an entrepreneurial streak. He is founder director at Forth – a community interest company who believe in the power of creativity as a tool for social change. It’s the new home for the Fixperts and FixCamp learning programmes. Charny is a member of The Design Museum curatorial committee and is Professor of Design at Kingston School of Art.
Liza has a blended background in strategy, project management and implementation. In INDEX she leads the ‘Design to Improve Life Investment’ program, an acceleration program that works with design entrepreneurs and impact investors in realising sustainable solutions to global challenges.
Nadya develops novel fabrication machines at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. With her great knowledge in machines and digital fabrication she is an active member of the global fab lab community and a board member of the Open Source Hardware Association.
Guillaume is the co-founder and Strategy Director of SPACE10 – a research and design lab, on a mission to create a better everyday life for people and planet.
Tomas is a Venezuela born Urbanist, Designer and Technologist who specializes in digital fabrication and its implications in the future of cities and society. He is a founding partner and executive director of the Fab City Foundation, as well as a member of the board of trustees of IAAC Foundation, where he also is a senior researcher and tutor.
Master Arts and Society (University Utrecht) and Bachelor of Design (UNSW), Kate has vast experience in cultural programming, design and open tech fields in Australia and Europe. As Outreach Lead at Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC she led communication and dissemination for various European research projects concerned with circular economy, open design innovation ecosystems and future cultural heritage.