Short abstract:

The purpose of this contribution is to present the results of an analysis of the company InMachines, scheduled for spring 2024. InMachines is a company based near Hamburg that manufactures 3D printers and other machine tools in kit form for fab labs and makers' communities.

Long abstract:

The split between globalised production systems and the Western consumer market is a phenomenon which, coupled with metropolisation, has fostered the illusion of a dematerialised urban economy. In contrast, cosmolocalism and commons-oriented peer production (Bauwens & Kostakis, 2014) aim to relocalise the material, what is 'heavy', and foster the exchange of data, what is 'light'. The Fab City concept, coined in Barcelona in the early 2010s, has drawn on these ideas to develop a vision of ‘locally productive and globally connected’ cities and regions (Diez Ladera, 2016). In the fifty cities that make up the international Fab Cities network, fablabs are at the heart of the dissemination of technological innovations that aim to bring about structural societal change, such as the spread of the use of 3D printers.

Following a theoretical approach – a critical reading of technical progress and the resistance to it (Jarrige, 2016) and pleas to ‘conviviality’ regarding tools and objects (Illich, 1973) – this contribution will look at the German case of the company InMachines. As part of Fab City Hamburg, this company manufactures 3D printers and other machine tools in kit form for fablabs and makers' communities. A study of the company is planned for spring 2024, with a view to uncovering the logics and objectives at work in this initiative, particularly in its relationship (more or less reflexive) to technology, in the impact it has or tends to have on local communities in Hamburg and in its integration into the wider Fab City project.