Abstract.Redistributed manufacturing is an emerging concept which captures the anticipated reshoring and localisation of production from large scale manufacturing plants to smaller-scale localised, customisable production units, largely driven by new additive digital production technologies. Critically, community-based digital fabrication workshops, or makespaces, are anticipated to be the hothouse for this new era of localised production and as such are key to future sustainable design and manufacturing practices. In parallel, the concept of the circular economy (CE) conceptualises the move from a linear economy of takemake-waste to a closed loop system, through repair, remanufacturing, refurbishment and recycling which maintains the value of materials and resources.Despite the clear interplay between RdM and CE, there is limited research exploring this relationship. In light of these interconnected developments, the aim of this paper is to explore the role of makespaces in contributing to a circular economy through RdM activities. This is achieved through six semistructured interviews with thought leaders on these topics. The research findings identify barriers and opportunities to both CE and RdM, uncovers key overlaps between CE and RdM, and identifies a range of future research directions that can support the coming together of these areas.The research contributes to a wider conversation on embedding circular practices within makespaces and their role in RdM.
focuses on design for owner-object detachment through care practice, for object longevity and environmental benefit. She investigates how 'carative factors' can be translated to the design domain and might offer designers ways to encourage users to emotionally let go of objects, to dispose of them responsibly, or to sustain and extend product lifespan. Her research interest includes design for behaviour change; research method and tools for users in different contexts; participatory design methodologies. Yoon Jung has a MA in Communication design and worked as a structural packaging designer.
Reducing home energy use is a major societal challenge, involving behaviour change alongside infrastructure improvements. However, many approaches lump ‘energy demand’ together as something homogeneous, addressable primarily through quantitative feedback, rather than basing interventions on an understanding of why people use energy as they do. Our contention is that people don't set out to ‘use energy’: its use is a side effect of solving everyday problems, meeting needs for comfort, light, cooking, cleaning, entertainment, and so on.Design researchers at the Royal College of Art have been carrying out ethnographic research with a diverse range of householders, investigating nuances of daily interactions with heating and lighting, meters and appliances—alongside people's understanding of energy and how their actions affect its use. Insights, integrated with household monitoring data, will inform the co‐design of prototype products and services to help people reduce their energy use while meeting needs.
In the imminent future, scarcity of resources will require architects to be as engaged with the redesign of services and infrastructure as they are now with the specifying of new materials. This is a situation that will be made all the more urgent by the increasing gap in public spending at a local and national level. Clare Brass, Flora Bowden and Kate McGeevor describe SEED Foundation, an enterprise that advocates new design approaches for sustainability, and explain how FoodLoop, a food waste and food growing project in London, is helping residents of the Maiden Lane Estate in King's Cross to take over the running of a food waste collection scheme without the aid of council funding.
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