FAB LAB network
The Ateneus de Fabricació, or Fab Labs, are a public service that promotes the dissemination of technology and the science of digital manufacturing.
They are places for learning, sharing, and exchanging knowledge. They promote digital literacy and foster social innovation in the neighbourhoods of Barcelona. These Fab Labs provide spaces for the citizens, the educational community and the world of business, associations and the community to discover and work with new digital manufacturing technologies.
What are our objectives?
- To bring digital manufacturing technologies and science (and their applications) to the whole city, local residents, different social groups, entities, companies, schools and institutions in our neighbourhoods.
- To develop participation and networking models focused on social innovation and promotion of the collaborative economy, and which foster new ways of communicating and exchanging talent and open and collaborative learning.
- To support projects that have a social return and are transformative for a particular group, the city of Barcelona or the world as a whole.
- To share the knowledge generated in all the processes in order use it to maximum benefit.
What is digital manufacturing?
It consists of the digitalisation of production processes using new technologies such as 3D printing or laser cutting. While the definition might seem straightforward, the term is much broader, ranging from the purely technical to social aspects.
The digital manufacturing revolution is based on the idea of converting information into objects and objects into information, enabling anything to be produced just about anywhere and at any time. Therefore, digital manufacturing is a reality that is here to stay and is, in one way or another, improving the lives of many people, whether directly or indirectly.
How do we operate?
The Fab Lab service is public and free of charge and is based on a collaborative economic model where what is uppermost is not ownership but use.
These spaces are open to everyone and the "price" paid to use them is known as a consideration: a system of social return that the user provides to the lab, to people or to the city, in exchange for the support they have received to carry out a project.
The idea is that it should operate without the involvement of money, where the currency of exchange is talent, involvement, time, and the participation of the users of the labs for the benefit of the community. This implies an exponential growth of the labs’ resources, which generates activities proposed by the people themselves.