smow blog compact: The Maker Library Network at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery

In his review of Chris Taylor’s book “How Star Wars Conquered the Universe” the American film critic Tom Shone makes a point so obvious you wonder how it has escaped you these past 38 years:

Junk is everything in Star Wars. The Jawas deal in junk. The droids are sold as junk. Our heroes are delivered as junk into the Death Stars trash compactor. That the Death Star is the only new piece of technology on display is sign enough of its nefariousness: those serving the Empire are the only people in the galaxy not to have heard of recycling. Everyone else tinkers, modifies, retrofits, recycles and retools¹

The bad guys reliant on high investment, high maintenance systems, the good guys doing it themselves with the available local resources and adapting as the situation demands.

And today?

Today, the spirit of the Jedi and their counterparts in the battle against the all pervasive Empire is being ably carried forward by the global Maker scene. And until the end of August the Vitra Design Museum is offering all a chance to experience this brave new future via the so-called Maker Library Network.

Funded by the British Council the Maker Library Network is a global project dedicated to both sharing the ideals of making as well as offering makers a platform through which to exchange ideas, experiences and skills. Following the “establishment” of maker libraries in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cape Town, Weil am Rhein is the latest maker library in the network and in addition to a makespace offering a programme of workshops to introduce and encourage making the Vitra Design Museum Maker Library also features a library with texts relevant to the movement and processes and a gallery/exhibition presenting objects and projects realised in the course of the programme and which aims to explain the background to and future of the movement.

Now to be perfectly clear making is not to be confused with upcycling. Yes there are occasional, and very, very disappointing crossovers, but in general making is more about empowering each and everyone one of us to take decisions about form, functionality and aesthetics into our own hands and to make not buy; and that largely, though not exclusively, with the aid of the latest manufacturing and computer technology, be that 3D printing, CNC milling or pieces of simple, configurable software. DIY for the 21st century, if you will.

As we’ve said before, the future is analogue. And as we’ve explained before, that doesn’t mean a future without computer technology, but a future where computer technology frees society to concentrate on those things that are truly important, where all have access to the tools and information they require to lead their lives as they want, where decentralised production replaces mass production, where computer technology is freed from its commercial function and has acquired a social function. Which doesn’t mean a future without designers, but a future in which designers increasingly devise systems and prototypes which each and everyone of us can use and adapt as required. A future in which design is understood as a process and not a product.

Making is thus an interesting, future orientated movement, envisaging as it does a future without multi-national conglomerates, without Death Star owning Empires, all powerful search engine operators, telephone manufacturers, booksellers or, and taken to its extremes, a future without internationally active furniture manufacturers.

And these aren’t new ideas, the were first formulated a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away………..

The Maker Library Network can be experienced at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, Charles-Eames-Str. 2, 79576 Weil am Rhein until Sunday August 30th.

Full details can be found at www.design-museum.de
And further information on the Maker Library Network can be found at http://makerlibrarynetwork.org

1. Tom Shone, A Death Star is born, New Statesman, London, 29.05.2015

Maker Library Library @ Thingking, South Africa (Photo © Jana Atherton-Chiellino for British Council, courtesy of the Vitra Design Museum)