Fab Lab Barcelona is a research-focused fabrication laboratory in a former ceramics manufacturing facility 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 provides 4 blended teaching programs and companions with faculties and universities to foster what it calls “a participatory, hands-on, and future-facing” model of studying. Fab Lab Barcelona can be the coordinator of the Distributed Design Platform, an change and networking hub for the European maker and design motion.
Not too long ago, 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 packages at MOME exploring environmental information and design
The Good Citizen package, an open supply mission led by Fab Lab Barcelona, was used to gather environmental information from completely different places on the MOME campus, close by forests, and the town heart. The scholars had 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 determine correlations and variations. The scholars labored in three teams, refining concepts to determine environmental challenges and develop options. These options had been to be open, collaborative, and introduced 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 mission stations with posters, mockups, drawings, and illustrations. Guests can transfer between stations and speak to the group members to supply suggestions and recommendations. Fab Lab Barcelona calls this model of presentation “Design Dialogues.”
Design Dialogues (📷: Antoine Jaunard)
On the finish of the week, the three initiatives — a hoop with altering colour primarily based on air high quality, a cellular sport geared toward kids and younger adults, and an interactive public set up to showcase social and environmental points — had been introduced formally.
The Information for Good design problem helped the scholars study environmental monitoring, information evaluation, and design pondering 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 follow.
In response to Jessica Carmen Man, Distributed Design lead at Fab Lab Barcelona, they will do that by offering entry to superior instruments, “enabling college students and researchers to prototype concepts, check ideas, and interact in hands-on experimentation.” They’ll additionally foster interdisciplinary studying and function co-creation hubs the place data is shared freely and overtly.
Jessica Man, distributed design professional
Inside the Fab Academy community, fab labs are shifting 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 are usually not separate phases however intertwined processes.” They’re proven “body clear analysis questions, doc processes rigorously, and use fabrication as a technique for inquiry and data manufacturing.”
The middle champions distributed schooling, an strategy to studying that emphasizes each native and international instruction. In response to Man, FLB collaborates with specialists worldwide to create studying content material, permitting them to characterize themselves. The middle’s function is to facilitate the conversations and assist “communication and data sharing in an equitable, significant, and respectful method.”
Distributed schooling remains to be an educational mannequin in its infancy, and Man admits that it’s an ongoing studying journey for all contributors. You possibly can go to FLB’s web site to be taught in regards to the heart and what they’re constructing.
