Launch event for the ENSEMBLE Network of Productive and Collaborative Spaces.

The ENSEMBLE Network of Productive and Collaborative Spaces will celebrate its official launch in Barcelona on 16 and 17 October 2025 with the Producing (in) Common Conference and Exhibition, coinciding with Barcelona Design Week. During two days open to the public, professionals, institutions and communities, the event will combine presentations, round tables and a collective exhibition with a selection of projects at the Fab Lab Barcelona of the IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) in Poblenou.

The network brings together more than 25 spaces in the Barcelona metropolitan area: Fab Labs, Manufacturing Athenaeums, makerspaces, industrial coworking spaces, craft centres and other spaces that rethink what it means to produce in the city today. ENSEMBLE brings together infrastructure, knowledge and communities. By placing them at the centre of the urban debate, these spaces function as civic platforms where industrial memory intersects with new forms of local production — from community to professional, low tech to high tech — promoting cooperative, public-private or community management models. At the same time, they allow for the testing of key practices for the urban present: the right to repair, the circular economy on a metropolitan scale, digital literacy as a citizen’s right, gender equality in production and ethical data control.

Positioning collaboration as a driver of change for experimenting and prototyping urban futures, the proposal articulates the concept of ‘common’ on two complementary scales, local and international. In this context, the Distributed Design Platform joins in with a session of presentations and a round table discussion (from 4pm to 6pm, [register here]), providing an international perspective on distributed design and connecting global experiences with local practices. This collaboration will open up the conversation towards a practice of the commons, where knowledge, methodologies and communities converge around crafts, materials and new forms of production. The collective work Driving Design Trilogy will also be presented, celebrating the complete publication of this series of research and practice.

Throughout the two days, a demo-exhibition by the different members of the ENSEMBLE network will be open to the public, showcasing prototypes and selected projects as examples of social, cultural and technological innovation. [Register here to visit the exhibition]

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This event will be held in spanish and catalan. There will be no live translations. 

Programme

6:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. | Participant registration

6:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. | Welcome and official presentation of the Ensemble Network of Productive and Collaborative Spaces

7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. | Round table 1: The right to manufacture: city, heritage and new productive commons

• UAB Open Labs
• BIT Habitat – Barcelona City Council Innovation Agency
• TMDC
• Akasha Hub Barcelona

8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. | Round table 2: Spaces for experimentation: culture, creativity and opportunities in the productive city

• Ludic3
• Hangar.org
• Makers Zone BCN
• Fab Casa del Mig
• Tornem les Esquelles

21:00 – 21:30 | Project exhibition and drinks reception

Sign up here to join us!