Re-Designing Products for a Circular Economy part of Open Design & Manufacturing Project OD&M

We were treated to an OD&M open workshop event 'Re-Designing Products for a Circular Economy' on Wed, 7 November at Camberwell Playground, Wilson Road, led by Nat Hunter, co-founder of The Great Recovery. This first OD&M open workshop event at Camberwell Playground aims to start a new series of open design collaboration and exchanges between CSM (MA Industrial Design), CCW (Digital Maker Collective), EU project partners and the wider public.

The event is part of the Digital Maker Collective (see OD&M at Tate Exchange: A Case Study) involvement in the UAL (EU & China) EU funded Open Design & Manufacturing Project OD&M co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. OD&M is a Knowledge Alliance dedicated to create and support communities of practices around the Open Design & Manufacturing paradigm, making the most of openness, sharing and collaboration to create new value chains of innovation in design and manufacturing oriented to the social good.

In this hands-on 2 hour workshop, Nat Hunter, co-founder of The Great Recovery, outlined the need for us to move to a circular economy. We got our hands dirty using security toolkits, hammers and spudgers, taking discarded products apart to see what is in them. We analysed the materials, mapped out supply chains, and talked about what happens to these products when they are discarded in various parts of the world.

We then redesign some of the key products for a circular economy, using The Great Recovery design model. We redesign each product for fix & repair, for service design, for re-use in manufacture and for material recovery. We considered Internet of Things, sensors, tracking, robots and other technology that can help us achieve these new business models.

User login