Presentation given at Transforming Production: An Open Design Distributed Manufacturing Symposium (Melbourne, Australia), May 2017 www.eventbrite.com/e/transforming-production-an-open-design-distributed-manufacturing-symposium-tickets-33687885372#

1. Design Global
Manufacture Local
Relocalising Production in Cities
Sharon Ede
Transforming Production: Open Design Distributed Manufacturing
Melbourne, May 2017

2. digital technology
+ the open source
movement =
lowering the
financial and
practical barriers
to production
the physical means
of production is
being
democratised

3. cities are the
economic and
political
powerhouses of
the 21st century
by 2025, 600 cities
will generate more
than 60 percent of
global GDP growth

4. CITY NATION
Tokyo South Korea
New York Spain, Canada
Los Angeles Australia
Seoul Malaysia
London Netherlands
Paris South Africa
Shanghai Philippines
City Economies vs National Economies
equivalent in size to

5. to sustain this growth, cities are running
‘ecological deficits’ - dependent on extensive,
fossil-fuel powered supply lines, and access to
resources + ecological capacity from elsewhere

6. estimates at the time of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit found that 75% of
the natural resources harvested and mined from the Earth are shipped,
trucked, railroaded and flown to the 2.5% of the Earth’s surface that is
metropolitan, where 80% of those resources are converted into ‘waste’

7. shipping is projected to be responsible for 17% of
global emissions by 2050
both shipping and aviation are excluded from
international climate change negotiations due to
the difficulty of allocating emissions to one country

8. ‘frequent flyer prawns’ - caught in Scotland, sent to
Thailand for shelling, shipped back to the UK for
distribution because Thai labour is cheaper
- a 13,000 mile round trip
a typical container of strawberry yoghurt in Germany
clocks up over 12,000 miles of transport in the
process of being made, assembled into its pot and
delivered to the point of sale

9. …what if we swapped information
(recipes, or designs) on how to make
the product, instead of the product?
‘boomerang trade’ eg. exporting sugar
cookies to Denmark while importing
sugar cookies from Denmark…
wouldn’t it be more efficient to swap
recipes?

10. GLOBAL = LIGHT
economy of BITS - ‘light’ things
(data, information, shared/open
source design) travel
LOCAL = HEAVY
economy of ATOMS – ‘heavy’
things (atoms, physical production,
manufacturing) stays local

11. harnessing these spaces + digital
manufacturing technologies:
potential for returning production
to cities – microfactories,
distributed manufacturing, small
scale, clean, on demand production
makerspaces and Fab Labs:
physical space, equipment and
networks for relocalised production

12. there are over 1,000 Fab Labs in the world today

13. these places
represent a
potential
distributed
infrastructure
for relocalising
production

14. create, upload, and distribute ‘bits’ (data, recipe, design)

15. download, customise, and make with ‘atoms’ (materials, tools, energy)

16. Fab City Research
Laboratory in
Barcelona
works to harness
these trends of
open digital
fabrication, and
the ability to
produce locally, to
create more self
sufficient cities

17. Poble Nou
a productive
neighbourhood
in Barcelona,
supported by
local and
international
communities,
using new
technologies to
build the Fab
City prototype

18. FOOD

19. ENERGY

20. FABRICATION

21. hyper-local production - the designs for the fitout
of LEKA Restaurant in the Poble Nou district were
fabricated in the Fab Lab in Barcelona, walked
down the street, and assembled on-site

24. ‘The first city to become self-sufficient – simultaneously
increasing employment by creating opportunities through
open innovation, and radically reducing carbon emissions by
re-localising production – will lead the future of urban
development globally.’
Tomas Diez
Director, Fab City Global Initiative