SUPERLOCAL, 0 miles production.

SUPERLOCAL

ANDREA DE CHIRICO SOCIAL DESIGN MASTER PROGRAMME, DAE 2014/2015

0.0 PROJECT SUMMARY 0.1 WHY 0.2 WHAT 0.3 CONCLUSIONS 1.0 PRODUCTION LINES THROUGHOUT HISTORY 1.1 MIDDLE AGE GUILDS AND THE ARTS&CRAFTS MOVEMENT (WILLIAM MORRIS) 1.2 FORDISM 1.3 TOYOTISM 1.4 THE SHARING ECONOMY

INDEX

2.0 P2P SYSTEMS DEFINITION 2.1 AUTOPROGETTAZIONE (1964) 2.2 FLOK SOCIETY (2013) 3.0 SUPERLOCAL - 0 MILES PRODUCTION 3.1 FORMS FOLLOWS CONTEXT 3.2 DARWINIST THEORY APPLIED TO OBJECTS 3.3 THE METHODOLOGY 3.4 MANIFESTO 3.5 SYSTEM ELEMENTS 3.6 ECONOMIC MODEL 3.7 MY ROLE 4.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY

0.0 PROJECT SUMMARY 0.1 WHY. I’m a designer and I’m capitalist by

conviction and by profession. I believe that’s the best economic system available as it rewards entrepreneurship and risk-taking. What we need however is a shift from the industrial capitalism era to a “constructive capitalism”. That’s because industrial capitalism is an economic model that is disappearing as it doesn’t work anymore. Labour as we know it is going to change. If we look at the European situation, stats are showing that full-time employment is going down, and part-time jobs are becoming the normality. Job vacancy rates are going drastically down since 2008, and there is always a greater gap between the employer wage and the workers one. That’s because industrial capitalism produces “thin value”, and it is not sustainable from a social and environmental points of view. It is artificial, often gained through harm or at the expense of the people, communities and society. That brings for instance to the decentralisation of production to cheaper countries, off-shoring and out-sourcing. What we need now is the “thick value”, and therefore the will to centralise the various production steps as a way to centralise responsibility. Thick value is authentic, meaningful and sustainable. It lasts beyond production and consumption. It grows in time and it benefits boardrooms, shareholders, people, communities, societies, and the natural world. SUPERLOCAL addresses the “thick value”.

0.2 WHAT. An updated version of the production line is possible. But it cannot concern just the time efficiency anymore, but instead the social and environmental viability of how things are produced.

These new production lines are organised within a global network called SUPERLOCAL. It promotes local based production lines to clearly address the context of production. It aims to create an open production database of daily life objects, and therefore to give creative and critical tools to the people for world-creating. It wants to encourage a process of evolution applied to objects, where, as they are released in an open source environment, they inspire people to make and develop them further. Keeping the designer in charge of the production line 1.0, it offers the opportunity to suggest a development of the objects. It basically applies the principles of biodiversity to goods production, since it is a way to ensure their variation and survival. To achieve that it suggests a method to design the production lines: 1. mapping what’s locally available 2. get in contact 3. design the production line according to what’s available 4. activate the production 5. upload the production data online I intend to consider the town of Eindhoven as a case study for one year. I’ll design a series of production lines which are enlighten the possibilities offered by the place. I’ll access the largest variety of materials and manufacturing techniques available, design some combinations between the digital and the traditional. This set of objects, production 1.0, will be released online at the end of the year, as the base for the evolutionary process. Finally, the constant feedback loop between the design of the production lines and its reproduction success is

what preserves its biodiversity.

0.3 CONCLUSIONS. SUPERLOCAL brings back production to the town, and uses its infrastructure as the conveyor belt for new supply chains. That leads to networked production, the same thing that’s happening for many other fields (music with spotify, cinema with youtube, hotels with airbnb, transport with blablacar and so on...). A greater future will be possible thanks to self-organising formats to manage the social and productive life of each one of us. SUPERLOCAL is an attempt to apply the same mentality on goods production, offering a method to design production lines that are addressing the context explicitly. It is about resilience and about the changing of labour. It is about demonstrating that an alternative is possible. We need to build organisations that are less like machines, and more like living networks of many different kinds of capital, whether natural, human, social, or creative.

In fact, every object released via the system is showcasing manufacturing opportunities of a specific area, and connects different places in town, in order to inspire others to do the same. The municipalities should see SUPERLOCAL as an opportunity for employment, and start encouraging self entrepreneurship. Local economies will increase, small workshops will be preserved and raw materials found in town will be reused. I personally believe in that as an opportunity for a shift from “dumb” growth to “smart” growth. Finally, the designer is no longer a trend reader used by the industry, but a designer of alternative production scenarios. That brings more responsibility, but makes the discipline much more exciting.

1.0 THE PRODUCTION LINES TROUGHOUT HISTORY

1.1 MIDDLE AGE GUILDS During the XII century, the European production was happening through the Guilds, one for each profession. There were merchant guilds and crafts guilds. A higher social status could be achieved through a guild membership. Guilds would be responsible for fair pricing policies and the quality of goods and workmanship. The production was based on crafts and hand made objects, therefore the production lines were completely adaptable according to the needs of the consumer and the producer, but still depending on the local resources. Being a dark historical phase for many aspect, the Middle age could be considered as the golden age of crafts.

After the first industrial revolution, at beginning of 1800, William Morris founded the Arts and Crafts movement. In his view the act of making would be a political response to the Industrial Revolution. They saw industrialisation degrading labor, social structures, and conditions of society, and they shaped a design practice as a form of resistance intended to reconnect the schism between labour, product and capital. I think we are facing exactly the same problem that Morris did as contemporary making attempts to negotiate a new role for design.

1.2 FORDISM One hundred years later, at the beginning of XX century, the Fordism rose in the United States. We are in one of the deepest phases of industrialisation, and capitalism promotes unlimited economic growth for having always greater profits. In order to achieve that, the production lines have been optimised to be always more efficient. In fact, in the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Ford promoted a more efficient way to produce goods within the automotive industry. The “fordism” (that’s how it has been called later) promotes a production that is based on standardised and mass produced objects. In fact in 1920, the ford T was produced just in black, and, thanks to the fordist production line, its manufacturing time passed from the usual 12 hours to one and a half. The production tools were designed in order to make the process as efficient as possible, in terms of time and energy spent by the workers. There wasn’t a clear focus on the materials.

1.3 TOYOTISM In the fifties, after the second world war, the Toyota engineers had to face the problem of scarcity of raw materials in Japan. In order to overcome the problem they designed a new way of production, that is called “toyotism”. This movement implies the fact that the production happens “just-in-time”. It means that production, as it needs to be more efficient in terms of raw material use, turns from heavy to lean.

The concept behind the “lean production” is that every step needs to be easily reconfigurable in order to quickly answer to market demands and preferences. Therefore, if one component of the car doesn’t work properly in a certain context, the factory doesn’t need to redesign the whole production line, but just the problematic piece. A key outcome of the Toyota Production System is the low level of inventory in order to keep the waste materials as low as possible. The principles that are behind the “toyotism” are that the production works on a never-ending flow of improvements of the production line. In addition, it is the result of a push/pull action, it means that it works and adjusts according to the response of the market, that of course changes according to the context.

1.4 THE SHARING ECONOMY What we are seeing now is the raising of the collaborative consumption. The access to goods and skills is becoming more important than the ownership of them. That implies lower costs, less waste and the creation of global communities with neighbourly values. The principle that’s at the very heart of the sharing economy is the resilience of distributed systems. Market is starting to give way to networks. On a more manufacturing prospective, techniques became more affordable for users (3d printing, laser cutting, etc..) who could even get an active role within the production process (prod-users). This allows the raising of many new production scenarios, that can operate on a local base, but be part the global online community.

Manufacture within a network brings more value in terms of social value and resilience. I want to define this value as “thick value” as it is more authentic, meaningful and sustainable. The traditional dream of rags to riches is being supplanted by a new dream of sustainable quality of life. One of the greatest example of this mentality is the openstructure project. It is a project by Thomas Lommee and it basically applies the principles of the game “meccano” to the design of daily life objects. As the object parts are all designed according to the same dimension grid, every object is reconfigurable into something else, making the objects easily learn, adapt and evolve according to the context. The key aspect of these sort of production lines is that there is no division between the producers and the consumers anymore, everyone becomes a peer (a contributor) within the system. These kind of systems are called peer2peer systems.

MIDDLE AGE GUILDS (476-1453)

FORDISM (1920)

TOYOTISM (1950)

SUPERLOCAL (NOW)

CRAFTS CUSTOMISED PRODUCTION WORKERS: CRAFTSMEN (SKILLED)

HEAVY PRODUCTION STANDARDIZED/MASS PRODUCTION WORKERS=REPETITIVE ACTIONS

PRODUCER ECONOMY INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (1780-1820) CONSUMER ECONOMY

LEAN PRODUCTION EASILY ADAPTABLE PRODUCTION WORKERS: SKILLED OPERATIONS NETWORKED PRODUCTION SUPER-CUSTOMISABLE PRODUCTION AS POWERED BY PLATFORMS WORKERS=CLIENTS=PEERS

PRODUCER ECONOMY

CONSUMER ECONOMY FORDISM (1920) GLOBAL

TOYOTISM (1950) GLOBAL

INTERNET MIDDLE AGE GUILDS (476-1453) LOCAL

PRODUCER ECONOMY

SUPERLOCAL (NOW) LOCALLY OWNED BUT GLOBAL

2.0 THE P2P SYSTEMS PEER-TO-PEER (P2P) COMPUTING OR NETWORKING IS A DISTRIBUTED APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE THAT PARTITIONS TASKS OR WORK LOADS BETWEEN PEERS. PEERS ARE EQUALLY PRIVILEGED, EQUIPOTENT PARTICIPANTS IN THE APPLICATION. THEY ARE SAID TO FORM A PEER-TO-PEER NETWORK OF NODES.

2.1 P2P SYSTEMS Nowadays, we are seeing the flourishing of the “peer production”. That means a subset of commons-based production practices. These practices are organised within networks.

Therefore, every network element is acting as both input and output of informations. This is the case of wikipedia for instance, where every user can add informations regarding a certain topic he is particularly keen on, and, at the same time, get informations about a topic he doesn’t know at all, and that someone else knows more about. This kind of system works particularly well because knowledge is something that is under constant change, and therefore dynamic. That is very visible if we speak about information flows, but why can’t it be the same for physical objects?

The first attempt to apply this mentality to physical production has been made in the sixties by Enzo Mari with Autoprogettazione (1967). He designed a range of wooden furniture pieces and he would send the technical drawings to the users to reproduce them. He designed a system based exclusively on the materials, the hardware. I want to bring up this example because Enzo Mari’s “Autoprogettazione” is the very first example of distributed manufacturing applied on the hardware, the physical world. I like the fact that the designer is still in charge of the design of the objects, but that the manufacturing is up to the user, that is going to perceive the product more personal as he/she builded it. That’s something that just a few years later will be in IKEA’s philosophy for instance. In modern times, thanks to the internet, many other peer production platforms occurred. One of the key actors of this movement is the peer2peer foundation, funded by Michael Bauwens.

Recently they started a project in Ecuador

called Flok society. The aim of the project is to change the productive matrix towards creating a society based on common, free and open knowledge, as stated in the National Plan of Good Living. So, how can we design a system that embraces the values of the locality on a material point of view?

SUPERLOCAL wants to embrace both examples, as they are the best peer2peer systems respectively from the software and the hardware world. Autoprogettazione for its focus on daily life objects, and the Flok Society for the digital infrastructure that was build to re imagine society in a more open way, considering the locality as an added value to underline.

3.0 SUPERLOCAL, 0 MILES PRODUCTION “KNOWLEDGE MUST NOT BE SEEN AS A MEANS OF UNLIMITED INDIVIDUAL ACCUMULATION, NOR A TREASURY GENERATING DIFFERENTIATION AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION BUT AS A COLLECTIVE HERITAGE WHICH IS A CATALYST OF ECONOMIC AND PRODUCTIVE TRANSFORMATION.” FLOK SOCIETY ON DISTRIBUTED MANUFACTURING (2012).

3.2 OBJECT DARWINIST THEORY “Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.”

Darwinism description.

“SUPERLOCAL is a network based on the darwinist theory applied on objects. It states that all the objects produced in a specific area arise according to the context where they’re produced, develop through the natural selection that increase the object’s ability to compete, be designed and be reproduced” Superlocal description.

WERELDHUIS EINDHOVEN SECOND HAND SHOP.

3.1 FORM FOLLOWS CONTEXT

KEES BERENDE, GLASS BLOWER FOR HAIRDRYER 1.0

The aim of the project is to build up an object production (both on a physical and intellectual point of view) that is closely linked to the locality.

Therefore, every town would have a different small scale production that is materialising and communicating the identity of the place. In market terms this discipline is called “place branding”.

Basically the object is embracing the social, economic and material connotation of its context.

That will increase local economy and make people aware of what’s available around them. Every object will have a production manual that is documenting the history of the object, the current state, and the possible developments. Therefore, starting from the “1.0” version it will pass from hand to hand, building up a local production knowledge around the object in time. The goods production happens within a networked environment. It combines traditional crafts with digital manufacturing. The two will live out of a mutual relationship. For digital manufacturing I mean all the new technologies that are occurring at the moment, such as the 3D printer, laser cut, CNC milling etc.. These new digital manufacturing techniques are already organised through physical places called Fablabs. This “fabrication laboratories” are placed within a global online network and they serve to put people in contact with these new technologies in order to produce physical outcomes. Every product that is produced via this network is available online for reproduction. They have a educational motivation

but they rarely address the local context explicitly.

Once the production is shared online very little contextual informations are shared together with the object.

FABLAB BRAINPORT, 3D PRINTING THE FILTERS FOR HAIRDRYER 1.0

One of the key points of this vision is that design needs to share and rethink the production process instead of the final outcomes. It suggests that it’s not the final outcome that counts, but the way to get to it. The products that are made this way will be made within a context of open knowledge, and therefore they’ll become not just exchange value for the market, but also value in terms of community making. It is about the fact that every object created within the system is going to create social value in the sense that it brings resilience. Knowing and being able to produce goods yourself makes you a potential competitor of the industrial system, and makes you much more powerful and aware as a consumer. SUPERLOCAL is about creating value circles and resilience value that would start an evolution process applied to objects and therefore preserve their biodiversity. What till now has been represented as the tree of life, showing the evolution process studied by Darwin, could be now be described through a network. Every user will experience how products are made through a series of data that will come together with the objects. The user then will have the chance either to reproduce the object as it is, or ask the network a customised version of it, basically he will carry on the evolution process initiated by the designer with the “1.0” version of the object.

3.3 THE METHODOLOGY In order to produce the objects that will be part of the natural selection that’s the five steps we need to go through: 1 . MAPPING WHAT’S AVAILABLE 2. GET IN CONTACT 3. DESIGN THE PRODUCTION LINE ACCORDING TO WHAT’S AVAILABLE 4. ACTIVATE THE PRODUCTION 5. UPLOAD THE PRODUCTION DATA ONLINE

3.4 MANIFESTO 1.

Reveal the potentials of a place. Clearly address the context where production happens.

2.

What is local is global. Thanks to the internet everything that is locally owned can become inspiring for people on a global base.

3.

Production is honest and transparent. The economic focus shifts from the consumer driven economy to a producer driven economy. That means that every object produced via the system creates resilience value. Those values are nowadays as important as the actual economic value of the object itself. Lastly, profit is seen as a consequence and not as a goal in itself.

4.

Centralised production. Centralising production, display, and retail service as a way of showing the desire to centralise responsibility. All will be transparent, from production to distribution, so that the philosophy behind this platform becomes tangible.

5.

System before objects. Objects are not a goal in themselves but they support the evolution process of the network.

6.

The opening of production brings a “design-after-design” scenario (Binder, 2011). How to design the tools to make others design?. Design-after design raises technological and economic challenges to face for several design fields.

7.

Built for disassembly. The objects produced via the system are designed to be disassembled and reused into new production lines. It is about creating a circular economic system.

8.

The natural selection. Like the process of evolution, the object production lines are adapting according to the never ending flow of informations between the context and the system. Those two are mutually informing each other on a manufacturing point of view (what’s available, where to find raw materials, what’s new and so on...).

3.5 ELEMENTS OF THE SYSTEM PRODUCTION PASSPORT: every object produced via the systems embraces human labor (crafts) and digital manufacturing. The production passport viasualizes the producing steps and makes the object reproducible. It describes the history of the production line, the current state, and the possible developments.

WEBSITE: SUPERLOCAL website makes the project global. Every object displayed comes with the production passport. Here is where all the knowledge connected to the object production is gathered.

HOME

PRODUCTS

PEOPLE

MAP

DISTRICT HOUSE: that’s the physical place where the contact between the network and the public happens. The district house coordinates the production activities of the district, being always in contact with local based production places (craftsmen, fablabs and suppliers). Gathering the elements from the surroundings, the objects are assembled into the district house. Moreover, that’s also where objects are sold and the materials re collected in case of damage. Here everyone can get access to an open library of production.

ABOUT

5 5

3 4 RCE EIN KFO

ERNATIVE ALT

MADE DH

L LOCA WOR

2

HAIRDRYER 1.0 “HAIRDRYER BECOMES TRANSPARENT” OBJECT COMBINES GLASS AND CORK, JOINED TOGETHER WITH 3D PRINTED PIECES. EVERY MATERIAL THAT WAS USED IS REUSABLE..

OBJECT MAKER:

ANDREA DE CHIRICO PRODUCT POPULARITY:

5 PRODUCED IN TOTAL PRODUCT RATING:

1 WATCH THE VIDEO

PIECES: 1. CORK HANDLE 2. 3D PRINTED JOINING PIECE 3. 3D PRINTED BACK FILTER 4. GLASS CORE PIECE 5. CORK PROTECTION PIECES

DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD LCA REPORT MAP

CAD DRAWINGS

SUPPLIERS: 1. YOGA STUDIO EINDHOVEN 2. TEUNISSEN METAL SCRAP YARD 3. BRIGATTI MANUFACTURES: 1. KEES BERENDE

OPEN PRODUCTION MAP: An online google map that is showing all the places involved into the different production lines. Everyone can get informations about production or add new ones.

SUPERLOCAL 3.6 A BUSINESS MODEL Like William Morris’s Arts and Crafts, open source platforms often don’t actually reach the real world because of an inefficient business model. Well, what I can say about it is that every object that is produced via the system is designed to be in the real world, and therefore the production costs are very important. The objects are designed to be aesthetically pleasant and functional. Basically they are designed to be sold and used. What make them different from normal objects is that they come together with all the informations needed to reproduce them, either in the same context or another one. It is possible to download just the informations to reproduce the objects, and that would happen for free. That is done not just because of altruistic feelings, but to advertise the system and the objects produced through it, helping the local based economy at the same time. The more people reproduce the objects, the more objects will be sold by the network itself. Craftsmen and companies should aim to be inside the network because that would get them advertised and bring more work in.

3.7 MY ROLE During the year I will design some beta production lines. They would be for a different range of objects, to show the potentials of what’s available in town (craftsmen, fablabs, places and raw materials suppliers). The beta production lines will function as guides for further ones. Every object will be a starting point for something else. In other words not a final piece but rather a “starting piece”.

I can describe my role within four actions: DESIGN practical object according to what’s available in town and design the system around it.

DOCUMENT every production line is documented through videos, pictures, interviews. They will be all available together with the objects in its manual.

NETWORKING get people involved, see possibilities, look for opportunities, know the locality.

KEEP TESTING get all the chances you have to test and adjust the network. Look for feedback about the system. Try it out!

mirror 1.0

hairdryer 1.0

superlocal production 1.0 (beta)

table 1.0

stool1.0 I designed some production lines in the town of Eindhoven, connecting the production places in order to make daily life objects.

The production 1.0 (beta) is released in open source in the system website. It is a set for women: an hairdryer, a mirror a table, and a stool.

KEES BERENDE: GLASS BLOWER

DIGIFAB: LASER CUT AND CNC MILLING

DAE WOOD WORKSHOP

BELDENSTOORM: METAL CASTING WORKSHOP

BRIGATTI: ELECTRIC APPLIANCES SUPPLIER

BURTKANTOOR: ASSEMBLING PLACE

GAMMAI PRAXIS: BRICOLAGE SUPPLIER

DE MORTEL: METAL SCRAP YARD

YOGA SCHOOL: CORK SUPPLIER DE GROTSE BAZAAR: SECOND HAND SHOP SUPPLIER

TEUNISSEN: METAL SCRAP YARD

KLUIJTMANS: STONE WORKSHOP

4.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY The wealth of networks, How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yochai Benkler, 2006.

Making Commons, Anna Serravalli, Malmo university. http://www.designfakulteten.kth.se/sites/default/fil es/anna_seravalli_dissertation.pdf The Craftsman, Richard Sennet.

Autoprogettazione, Enzo Mari.

The Flock Bauwens.

Society,

p2p

Foundation,

Michael

The future of capitalism, Jogi Panghaal.

Futuro artigiano, Stefano Micelli, Marsilio editore.