Tell us a little bit about the background and the aim of your project… 

The project started in 2011 as a research about participatory design practices and later developed into a larger scenario about democratic urban factories. The main idea around New Factories is that these shared facilities should connect different production processes under one roof, with the help of new technologies (Instant-Made), classical workshops (Hand-Made), recycling and disassembling (Re-Use) as well as industrial production for single parts (Pre-Made) and thus enable people to produce a wide range of products themselves.

After being exhibited in several exhibitions, it was tested in a real-life laboratory for several months including a pop-up factory on the road. Ever since the project is evolving, including ideas for a large shared factory facility, a medium-size pop-up facility (container), a mobile production unit on a cargo bike and factory-kits that could be delivered to every home. Complemented by a shared-knowledge platform and an online market place for additional services.

Recently NANK also started to envision the “1 H Work Index”, in this project the value of 1 h of work of more than 300 professions should be captured and benchmarked through a block-chain system. Resulting ideally in a more objective and transparent way of assessing the value of work.

Tell us a little bit about the creative aspect of your project…

In the Austrian branch of NANK the aspect of “Social Design” has always played a major role. Since community transformation and “social innovation” as such are processes that are quite abstract and hard to grasp, it was even more important to visualize those ideas in an easy comprehensible way and to bring in the aspect of Design as a catalyst between different disciplines. Last but not least it’s not only important that people understand the concept and the ideas but also that there is an emotional response to them and an appeal to be part of this change.

What are appropriate means for you to foster the inspiration towards future scenarios in general?

As mentioned above it’s important that there is also an emotional response towards a certain scenario. People are not basing their actions and goals in life on mere objective decisions, although some theories wished that would be the case. Rather it is, like most consumer product campaigns successfully prove, that we are not only longing to fulfill our actual needs but mostly to gain some kind of emotional satisfaction as well. This can be sometimes a major weakness of so called “objective scenarios” and their guiding principles.