Our organization Communautique is dedicated to driving the Fab City movement in Québec, Canada. We have established ourselves in a symbolic neighborhood within the manufacturing sector in the heart of Montréal to prototype the Fab City concept. The initiative we are presenting has evolved through three phases.

(1) We demonstrated the potential of our Fab Lab, called “échofab,” to meet community needs through open-source distributed manufacturing of 35,000 face shields at the beginning of the pandemic. This experience led us to deeply connect with the community.
(2) In anticipation of the Fab City Summit in Montréal, we conceived a signature Montréal project called “Remix Your Chair.” The idea was to take old, broken, or unloved chairs and transform them into functional chairs with a new aesthetic. The targeted creativity lay in using completely different pieces from the original missing parts, allowing visual artists, designers, and invited makers to unleash their imagination. These chairs were also intended to be auctioned off during the Fab City Campus event. This initiative revitalized the community’s efforts in chair collection, and as a result, one of the auction’s goals was to create a public bench.

(3) This open-source prototype project continued and led to distributed manufacturing by local stakeholders and the use of materials from an industrial symbiosis to create public benches that will be installed in the neighborhood.

By engaging communities in the manufacturing of public benches using locally available resources, it optimizes the use of materials that might otherwise go to waste, contributing to a more efficient resource allocation. The project encourages community collaboration in the design and production of benches, making the most of the skills and talents available locally. This shared approach fosters a sense of ownership and collective responsibility. Through its focus on sustainability, the project aligns with regenerative economy principles by reducing waste and promoting the reuse of materials.

Under the impetus of this initiative, several businesses in the Montréal District Central were invited to participate in a collaboration circle focused on the theme of resource sharing as part of the Fab City Campus event (June 2023). The aim was to establish connections and explore opportunities related to pooling their respective resources and strengths within the neighborhood. Discussions covered what resource sharing represents, its challenges, deployment methods, as well as the potential offered by the concept of micro-factories in the context of Fab Labs.