Output details

Developments in post-indutrial manufacturing systems and the implications for craft and sustainability

This is a 50:50 collaboration with Dr K Bunnell. This text discusses how developments in digital production technologies, when coupled with advances in digital communication and networking, have the potential to transform manufacturing, business structures and market economies. Capabilities of these technologies are illustrated through examples of design practice and research projects undertaken by the authors: Marshall’s Automake (see output 1) and Bunnell’s Autochina, which enables users to customise surface pattern design and buy ceramic tableware through a website designed to support remote, localised, made to order production.

These projects interrogate the role of craft in developing sustainable design practices. The authors draw strong parallels between the characteristics of craft practice - small-scale, flexible, localised and often bespoke - and nascent models of digital production that facilitate customisation and personalisation. These parallels are subsequently an important aspect of discourse on the digital economy and the digital making revolution (e.g. Makers by Chris Anderson, 2012).

The chapter is developed from a peer reviewed conference paper of the same name included in proceedings of Making Futures (2008) Vol. 1.(ISSN 2042-1664). The paper is referenced by Schwarz, M. and Yair, K. in their 2010 UK Crafts Council publication (2010), Making Value: craft & the economic and social contribution of makers, (ISBN-10 1903713226) and their 2011 research briefing, ‘Crafting Capital: new technologies, new economies.’

This thinking and research provides the foundations for ‘Supercrafted: distributed, localised production,’ a current Autonomatic research project funded by BT’s Superfast Cornwall Labs and ERDF to explore creative and economically beneficial applications of the internet for craft businesses in remote locations.