This document provides an overview of a doctoral dissertation defense. The dissertation examined the environmental sustainability of distributed production, including personal fabrication in makerspaces and Fab Labs. Through four published papers, the dissertation reviewed literature on the topic, studied how makers envision sustainability, analyzed a case study of a Fab Lab, and explored how sustainability is constituted in maker ideologies and practices. The research found gaps in how makers address sustainability issues and technological developments. It also showed tensions between counter ideals of open access and pressures for conventional funding models. The defense discusses lessons learned about enacting ideals through material practices and configurations.

2. DEFENCE OF DOCTORAL
DISSERTATION
Aalto University School of Arts,
Design and Architecture
Hämeentie 135 C, lecture room 822,
Helsinki, Finland
11 March 2016
Opponent: Dr Adrian Smith,
Professor of Science and Technology,
SPRU, University of Sussex
Custos: Dr Sampsa Hyysalo,
Associate Professor, Department of
Design,Aalto University
Lectio praecursoria

3. Honoured Custos, honoured opponent, ladies and gentlemen
Citizens are increasingly involved in the design and production
of their own products.These new activities are particularly
enabled by digital fabrication technologies that are not only
spreading in industry, they are becoming increasingly smaller
and cheaper even if less sophisticated – and increasingly
available to anyone in shared community workshops known as
makerspaces. Even here, in the next building, any citizen, any
one of us, can walk into a Fab Lab, a fabrication laboratory, and
have full access to additive manufacturing machines such as
3D printers, subtractive manufacturing equipment such as
CNC milling machines, and stations where we can make our
own electronic circuits.

4. Factory 2.0
DIY 2.0
Web 2.0
commons-
based
peer
production
material
digital
digital
manufacturing
distributed,
personal
distributed,
personalized
prosumption
distributed
hardware
distributed
software

5. Factory 2.0
DIY 2.0
Web 2.0
commons-
based
peer
production
material
digital
digital
manufacturing
distributed,
personal
distributed,
personalized
prosumption
distributed
hardware
distributed
software
This is not the world of the future factory, where promoters
are claiming that digital manufacturing will allow production to
return to Europe and we will be able to prevent the negative
environmental impacts of mass production due to, for
example, production on demand and only according to need.
Nor is this the Do-It-Yourself handicraft world of yesterday,
which proponents have espoused as offering a more satisfying
and fulfilling activity to consumerism and over-consumption.
Instead we are seeing new practices and new types of
communities, who co-create artefacts in a similar way as those
who contribute to Wikipedia or open source software
development.The difference here is that these are tangible
objects, produced using tangible machines and tangible
materials.

6. bespoke fabrication:
tailored, individualized
products, design and
fabrication in hands of
producer
mass fabrication:
unique products,
design and
fabrication in hands
of users in interaction
with each other
mass customization:
batch/modular
personalized products,
design and fabrication
in hands of producer
personal fabrication:
unique products,
design and fabrication
in hands of user,
shared designs
market
influence
non-market
influence
WHAT IS
DISTRIBUTED
PRODUCTION?
control over user/consumer input
scale
large
small
digital
manufacturing
peer-to-peer
production

7. bespoke fabrication:
tailored, individualized
products, design and
fabrication in hands of
producer
mass fabrication:
unique products,
design and
fabrication in hands
of users in interaction
with each other
mass customization:
batch/modular
personalized products,
design and fabrication
in hands of producer
personal fabrication:
unique products,
design and fabrication
in hands of user,
shared designs
market
influence
non-market
influence
WHAT IS
DISTRIBUTED
PRODUCTION?
control over user/consumer input
scale
large
small
digital
manufacturing
peer-to-peer
production
At the experimental DIY 2.0 level of
personal fabrication, therefore, the
world of Fab Labs and makerspaces,
there may be much we can learn
about the material effects of
distributed production and citizens’
involvement, especially if some of
these activities enter the
mainstream and 3D printing
becomes as disruptive a technology
as is claimed.

8. bespoke fabrication:
tailored, individualized
products, design and
fabrication in hands of
producer
mass fabrication:
unique products,
design and
fabrication in hands
of users in interaction
with each other
mass customization:
batch/modular
personalized products,
design and fabrication
in hands of producer
personal fabrication:
unique products,
design and fabrication
in hands of user,
shared designs
market
influence
non-market
influence
WHAT IS
DISTRIBUTED
PRODUCTION?
control over user/consumer input
scale
large
small
digital
manufacturing
peer-to-peer
production
Can this new way of making things
mean that production can become
dematerialized without sacrificing
quality of life? How will supply
chains change? Are there potential
environmental problems in this new
production mode? Are we in danger
of simply adding to the problems we
already face globally related to
pollution, overconsumption,
inequitable access to resources and
skewed distribution of
environmental harms to those least
equipped to tackle them?

9. PAPER 1
ADDRESSING SUSTAINABILITY
IN RESEARCH ON DISTRIBUTED
PRODUCTION:
AN INTEGRATED LITERATURE
REVIEW

10. mass fabrication:
transformed supply
chains, elimination of
embodied energy of
redundant
intermediaries
mass customization:
less pre-consumer waste,
greater potential for
re-manufacturing,
“eco-guiding” configurators
for consumers
bespoke fabrication:
localized production
and lower transport
emissions, less
product replacement
personal fabrication:
localized production,
higher environmental
impact per unit but
overall lower volumes
(than MP and MC)
ENVIRONMENTAL
BENEFITS
exploit user/consumer input
exploit
scale
exploit
modularization
exploit small
and local
ensure quality for
attachment, satisfaction
exploit learning
opportunities

11. mass fabrication:
transformed supply
chains, elimination of
embodied energy of
redundant
intermediaries
mass customization:
less pre-consumer waste,
greater potential for
re-manufacturing,
“eco-guiding” configurators
for consumers
bespoke fabrication:
localized production
and lower transport
emissions, less
product replacement
personal fabrication:
localized production,
higher environmental
impact per unit but
overall lower volumes
(than MP and MC)
ENVIRONMENTAL
BENEFITS
exploit user/consumer input
exploit
scale
exploit
modularization
exploit small
and local
ensure quality for
attachment, satisfaction
exploit learning
opportunities
In reviewing the research, it seems
we are not sure. Researchers are
examining selected aspects of
distributed production and
promoting certain environmental
benefits such as reduction of retail
infrastructure and its embodied
energy. But there are few studies
and they are often propositional and
based on little or no empirical
material.

12. mass fabrication:
distanced from
consumer recycling
systems and safety
standards, increased
transport of
components and
materials
mass customization:
customized products
add to mass production
material flow rather than
replace
bespoke fabrication:
high quality leads to
resource and energy
intensive production,
difficulty to reuse
bespoke products
personal fabrication:
greater personal
exposure to toxic
materials/emissions,
unregulated emissions
to environment
ENVIRONMENTAL
CONCERNS
regulations and standards
scale
global
local
quality drivers less regulation

13. mass fabrication:
distanced from
consumer recycling
systems and safety
standards, increased
transport of
components and
materials
mass customization:
customized products
add to mass production
material flow rather than
replace
bespoke fabrication:
high quality leads to
resource and energy
intensive production,
difficulty to reuse
bespoke products
personal fabrication:
greater personal
exposure to toxic
materials/emissions,
unregulated emissions
to environment
ENVIRONMENTAL
CONCERNS
regulations and standards
scale
global
local
quality drivers less regulation
These activities may also be too
new for researchers to determine if
distributed production will indeed
localize and reduce transport
emissions; if personalization and
personal fabrication will indeed
encourage product longevity and
thereby less material flow regarding
certain types of products; or how
remanufacturing schemes can take
advantage of this new mode of
production and current recycling
schemes adapt to it.

15. Most of the empirical studies are currently examining a limited
range of technical concerns regarding especially digital
manufacturing processes and materials. Material toxicity and
energy consumption arise as important issues, but in the
bigger picture it is challenging to gauge whether or when
there are larger system benefits to be exploited compared to
mass production. It is also especially challenging to study what
may be the most important opportunity for transformation:
the change in values and meanings these new activities have
for people.

17. Forerunner maker communities, however, are already
experimenting with these technologies, developing them, and
experimenting with new practices and organizational forms.
They are building ideologies and visions to guide their
practices, and they are attempting to implement these visions
in their everyday work. It is instructive, therefore, to examine
how makers see the future of their own field: how they
identify and tackle challenges in this rapidly changing
sociotechnical environment.

19. After all, they espouse ideologies that have
environmental ramifications. Some maker groups
want people to learn how to disassemble and
repair their own products; ...

21. ... others encourage people to make things they
truly need, there where they live; ...

23. ...and still others want to make production a truly local and
communal activity, that nevertheless learns from and shares
with other communities around the world.They want to open
up the black boxes of technologies and spread them to the
communities that need them: as the best alternative to mass
production and consumerism.

24. PAPER 2
ANTICIPATED ENVIRONMENTAL
SUSTAINABILITY OF PERSONAL
FABRICATION

26. However, in this study, there were groups of makers that
diverged in their awareness of their impacts on consumption
patterns, their concern with environmental issues, and their
ability to foresee future developments in making.
In the futuring workshop exercise described in paper 2, the
makers that were competent and interested in assessing
environmental impacts were different people from those
competent and interested in keeping track of rapidly evolving
technologies and new materials for making.The most
technologically knowledgeable and future-oriented participants
discussed emerging issues such as new practices and new tools
and technologies, but they generally did not express any
environmental concerns associated with these future possibilities
even when prompted. Nor did the explicitly sustainability-
oriented participants engage with these issues or their
implications, in their mission to consider traditional and currently
relevant making practices such as material waste and reuse.
This gap in practitioner orientation and competence is therefore
potentially problematic – even while we can take some comfort
in the fact that not every issue in a current or future makerspace
embodies an environmental sustainability implication.

28. The sustainability-oriented workshop participants were also
notably focused on those issues related to their current
projects, a phenomenon that seemed to eclipse other concerns
and their previous areas of interest and expertise.This salience
of current issues, whether it is a preoccupation with money or
lack of time, may lead us to make decisions that are essentially
counter to things we espouse as valuable.

29. PAPER 3
THE STORY OF MIT-FABLAB
NORWAY: COMMUNITY
EMBEDDING OF PEER
PRODUCTION

31. When we enter the Labs themselves, we witness first-hand how
makers attempt to build ideology together and then enact it.

32. They identify themselves as counter-communities, as groups trying to offer a better
alternative to mainstream production and consumption. Many Labs aim to complement or
even challenge formal education; others see themselves as an alternative platform for
entrepreneurship, exploring their role in the New Industrial Revolution. But they must carry
out these alternative, counter, grassroots, social economy activities within the constraints of
existing society, the market economy and incumbent institutions.This means, for one, a
tension between acceptance in their local community and meeting those local needs, and
maintaining this counter identity and relationships with forerunner makers – by contributing
to and communicating with the global Fab Lab network.

34. The opportunities afforded them if they turn from
counter to conventional, especially in terms of
financial support, may be so tempting and so salient,
they may distract makers from the goals they had
set out for themselves. In the Norwegian Lab we
see the strength of the counter ideology, the
determination of a charismatic Lab Director to
offer free and open access to his Lab, and the
paradox of a Lab that sees little digital fabrication
activity on a daily basis.We hear inspiring stories of
how a peer-to-peer community collaborates
together, and how grassroots innovations serving
local needs emerge from such collaboration.And we
also see the constraints such Labs experience when
they must keep themselves funded and keep their
families fed.

35. PAPER 4
MAKING ‘MAKING’ CRITICAL:
HOW SUSTAINABILITY IS
CONSTITUTED IN FAB LAB
IDEOLOGY

37. How ideologies and makers’ imaginaries are realized in practice is most
visible when examining their material objects. It is here we see both
ideology embodied in material practice, as well as compromises. In some
Labs we see sociotechnical practices deliberately configured to conform
to a specific socio-environmental vision of what a Fab Lab means in a
city.

39. Such practices make visible why people do what they do in the Lab, as well as the impacts of this activity outside the
Lab – both tangible, environmental impacts and intangible, value-based potential influence.The material objects invite
curiosity and questions, and they invite participation in accordance with the viewer’s own interests and skill levels.

41. When Labs make their own tools and furnishings, they embody their values in these objects.When they choose open
hardware and open software, they communicate to others the importance of these choices.These material
realizations are also invitations to others to become involved in this social world and join in the activity of grassroots
making and inventing.

42. When they make compromises, however, it is usually because of institutional constraints: a lack of time, a lack of ability
to procure locally, a lack of human resources.These compromises can accumulate and can configure future practices
for future users in ways that conflict with the original Fab Lab ideals.

44. Fab Lab managers must learn
how to manage the everyday
concerns in the Lab but also
manage strategy and vision
work – just as they learn – and
teach – the dialogue in digital
fabrication between the bit and
the atom.
In paper 4, again we saw the
dynamic where the most
sustainability-oriented makers
were not interested in
exploring the socio-
environmental potential of
digital fabrication.They
concentrated on their familiar
ad hoc, material
experimentation while refusing
to engage with the possibilities
wrought by digital technologies
and designed, conceptual
creative processes.

46. In the big picture this may mean that the most artistic and experimental practices remain
marginal, and valuable messages about consumerism, appropriate material use and reuse are
not transmitted and taken up by interested communities, including Fab Labs. On the Fab Lab
side, compromises in ideology inspire critique and controversy and may repel participants who
would otherwise have been recruited into this social world. Fab Labs are thus criticized by
some for contributing to useless production instead of praised for democratizing production.

48. Design and material visibility does have a role, however.The socio-environmental potential of distributed
production – the new industrial revolution – is much more than reuse and recycling, but even these basic and
obvious environmental concerns can be enacted in material objects that help configure beneficial practices.
Collection systems for 3D printing plastics...

49. 15.10.2012 7.11.2012 29.11.2012
29.11.2012 24.4.2013
19.3.2014 19.3.2014 10.10.2014

50. 15.10.2012 7.11.2012 29.11.2012
29.11.2012 24.4.2013
19.3.2014 19.3.2014 10.10.2014
... or boxes that make it easy to
store and reuse sheets in the laser
cutter make these issues visible in
the Lab.

52. The imaginary of the New Industrial Revolution
otherwise appears to eclipse these very real
material elements: supply chains, material flows,
energy flows. Moreover, the revolution must meet
the mundane: ideals and ideologies are easily
overshadowed by daily concerns, and shortcuts
and value compromises are easily taken.The
danger is that the maker movement chooses or
slides into adopting a path that conforms with the
existing market economy, complete with its socio-
environmental harms, consumerist values and
existing alignment with old production paradigms.

54. Actors in Fab Labs therefore often appear unaware of whose industrial
revolution they are promoting.The opportunities lie when the most ideological
Labs are supported in their work, consciously enact their ideals, and invite
others into conversations of how these practices provide societal value.

55. LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
Paper 1.
Kohtala, C., 2015.Addressing sustainability in research on distributed
production: an integrated literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production 106,
654-668. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.039
Paper 2.
Kohtala, C., Hyysalo, S., 2015.Anticipated environmental sustainability of
personal fabrication. Journal of Cleaner Production 99, 333–344. doi:10.1016/
j.jclepro.2015.02.093
Paper 3.
Kohtala, C., Bosqué, C., 2014.The Story of MIT-Fablab Norway: Community
Embedding of Peer Production. Journal of Peer Production 5. http://
peerproduction.net/issues/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/peer-reviewed-articles/
the-story-of-mit-fablab-norway-community-embedding-of-peer-production/
Paper 4.
Kohtala, C. Making ‘Making’ Critical: How Sustainability is Constituted in Fab Lab
Ideology. Unpublished, in review.
The dissertation is available here:
https://shop.aalto.fi/p/872-making-sustainability/
The pdf is freely available here:
https://shop.aalto.fi/media/attachments/f8dd3/Kohtala.pdf
(Questions? email me: Cindy Kohtala <cindy dot kohtala (at) aalto dot fi>)