Fab Lab Barcelona is a research-focused fabrication laboratory in a former ceramics manufacturing unit on the Institute for Superior Structure of Catalonia (IAAC). It’s a part of the Fab Academy community, a world distributed program with nodes worldwide.
Institute for Superior Structure of Catalonia
FLB affords 4 blended education schemes and companions with colleges and universities to foster what it calls “a participatory, hands-on, and future-facing” model of studying. Fab Lab Barcelona can also be the coordinator of the Distributed Design Platform, an change and networking hub for the European maker and design motion.
Lately, the centre collaborated with Moholy-Nagy College of Artwork and Design (MOME) to host a Information for Good design problem in Budapest. Held in February 2025, the problem lasted for every week and concerned college students from completely different bachelor’s and grasp’s applications at MOME exploring environmental information and design
The Good Citizen package, an open supply venture led by Fab Lab Barcelona, was used to gather environmental information from completely different areas on the MOME campus, close by forests, and town middle. The scholars have been additionally inspired to report their bodily perceptions of air high quality circumstances.
The target information from the Good Citizen package was in contrast with the recorded sensory expertise to establish correlations and variations. The scholars labored in three teams, refining concepts to establish environmental challenges and develop options. These options have been to be open, collaborative, and offered on the finish of the week.
Information assortment with the Good Citizen package (📷: Antoine Jaunard)
The event course of concerned public exhibitions of the working prototypes, with college students organising venture stations with posters, mockups, drawings, and illustrations. Guests can transfer between stations and speak to the group members to supply suggestions and ideas. Fab Lab Barcelona calls this model of presentation “Design Dialogues.”
Design Dialogues (📷: Antoine Jaunard)
On the finish of the week, the three tasks — a hoop with altering shade primarily based on air high quality, a cellular recreation aimed toward kids and younger adults, and an interactive public set up to showcase social and environmental points — have been offered formally.
The Information for Good design problem helped the scholars study environmental monitoring, information evaluation, and design considering to develop sensible, progressive options to urgent environmental points.
Fab labs, makerspaces, and open supply communities are better-positioned than conventional establishments to bridge the hole between principle and apply.
Based on Jessica Carmen Man, Distributed Design lead at Fab Lab Barcelona, they’ll do that by offering entry to superior instruments, “enabling college students and researchers to prototype concepts, check ideas, and have interaction in hands-on experimentation.” They’ll additionally foster interdisciplinary studying and function co-creation hubs the place information is shared freely and overtly.
Jessica Man, distributed design professional
Inside the Fab Academy community, fab labs are transferring from being a assist and outreach system to tutorial establishments in their very own proper.
Fab Lab Barcelona encourages its college students to undertake an iterative mindset to studying, “the place analysis and fabrication will not be separate phases however intertwined processes.” They’re proven the right way to “body clear analysis questions, doc processes rigorously, and use fabrication as a way for inquiry and information manufacturing.”
The middle champions distributed schooling, an strategy to studying that emphasizes each native and world instruction. Based on Man, FLB collaborates with specialists worldwide to create studying content material, permitting them to characterize themselves. The middle’s position is to facilitate the conversations and assist “communication and information sharing in an equitable, significant, and respectful method.”
Distributed schooling continues to be an tutorial mannequin in its infancy, and Man admits that it’s an ongoing studying journey for all individuals. You may go to FLB’s web site to be taught concerning the middle and what they’re constructing.
