do it yourself

We find ourselves in the brief pocket of the history of mankind in which DIY is a choice, compared to thousands of years of a DIY-by-default past and thousands more of a DIY-by-default future, not to mention the vast majority of people on the globe at this very moment for which the term is redundant. Like modern mass fabrication technology has produced the term DIY, modern peer fabrication technology
might make it disappear again. How about knitting your own car tonight, or modding your furniture in the microwave?

do it yourself contents in Open Design Now:

FIFTY DOLLAR LEG PROSTHESIS / ALEX SCHAUB ET AL

Intercontinental Collaboration on Prosthetic Design. If you plan to produce a $50 below-knee prosthesis for a developing country like Indonesia, where would you start? Is it even possible, considering that a below-knee prosthesis in the Western world costs $4,000? Waag … Continue reading

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DIWAMS / PAULO HARTMANN

DO IT WITH ALREADY MADE STUFF Paulo Hartmann As the environmental crisis grows ever more urgent, an awareness of ecological values is spreading. Overtly eco-friendly trends run rampant in corporate communications and marketing, plastering buzzwords like ‘sustainability’ all over every … Continue reading

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DESIGNSMASH / ENLAI HOOI

AN OPEN DESIGN BUSINESS MODEL. Enlai Hooi It is still somehow an unusual thought that open design might be considered a viable, possibly even beneficial, strategy for business. The product design industry has been slow to move on the issue … Continue reading

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CRITICAL MAKING / MATT RATTO

Open design can be employed to develop a critical perspective on the current institutions, practices and norms of society, and to reconnect materiality and morality. Matt Ratto introduces ‘critical making’ as processes of material and conceptual exploration and creation of … Continue reading

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DESIGN AND GOVERNMENT / BERT MULDER

Governmental institutions are challenged to use design and open design as a strategic tool. Bert Mulder addresses issues of participation and quality, and suggests how a government could develop a system that would include information, tools, methods and a set … Continue reading

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DESIGN LITERACY: ORGANIZING SELF-ORGANIZATION / DICK RIJKEN

The position of knowledge and expertise is changing radically, particularly in relation to how design literacy is affected when confronted with digital tools and media. Dick Rijken analyses design literacy on three levels – strategic, tactical, and operational – and … Continue reading

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CREATION & CO: USER PARTICIPATION IN DESIGN / PIETER JAN STAPPERS & CO

The roles of the designer, the client (or producer, or manufacturer) and the user are being shaken up in industrial practices that have, until now, been oriented mainly towards mass production. Stappers and his colleagues illustrate the contemporary occurrence of … Continue reading

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DO IT WITH DROOG / ROEL KLAASSEN, PETER TROXLER

Renny Ramakers talks about Droog’s latest project Downloadable Design, about making money, designing for the masses, the development of the design profession, and Droog Design’s recent experiments and research in sustainability, local production, co-creation, upcycling and collective revitalization of the … Continue reading

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ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN DESIGN / PAUL ATKINSON

Investigating the roots of open design and identifying its resulting technological, economical and societal changes, Atkinson contemplates the vast consequences this development will have for the design profession and the distribution of design. Paul Atkinson The concepts of open design … Continue reading

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Do It Yourself

Drill_CC_BY_NC_Mike_Neilso-copy

We find ourselves in the brief pocket of the history of mankind in which DIY is a choice, compared to thousands of years of a DIY-by-default past and thousands more of a DIY-by-default future, not to mention the vast majority … Continue reading

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