openbike, a manifesto for a sustainable, inclusive and empowered future
Openbike is a manifesto on sustainable urbanism, urban transport, distributed manufacturing, shared knowledge, the community and the responsible use of resources, that materializes in the design of a non-polluting urban transport, the bicycle, that can be manufactured by its own user within the city where it is going to be used.
Cross-border/international
Spain
Italy
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Netherlands
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: France
Openbike has been consulted and downloaded by people from all over europe (france, portugal, netherlands, germany, greece, italy,...) as well as from the rest of the planet (china, japan, korea, brazil, mexico, usa, canada, egypt , ...)
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2021-10-04
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Arquimaña Type of organisation: Architecture and design studio First name of representative: Iñaki Last name of representative: Albistur Gender: Male Nationality: Spain Function: Co-founder of the Arquimaña studio and the Openbike project. Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Jose Maria Soroa, 19, bajo Town: Donostia Postal code: 20013 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 649 55 88 33 E-mail:info@arqma.es Website:https://arqma.es
Openbike is a manifesto on sustainable urbanism, urban transport, distributed manufacturing, shared knowledge, the community and the responsible use of resources, that materializes in the design of a non-polluting urban transport, the bicycle, that can be manufactured by its own user within the city where it is going to be used.
The main keys of the manifesto are to achieve empowered citizens, turn cities into productive agents, not just consumers, use open source designs and work in an ecological and inclusive way.
Empowered citizens. Citizens as a transforming agent, putting technology at their service and prioritizing local production with local resources, generating active and productive cities.
Productive Cities. We can access Openbike shared digital information from anywhere in the world to materialize it locally and sustainably using local digital fabrication labs. We don’t transport materials but data.
Open Source Design. Developing and share knowledge, generating designs that are available on the network to be improved, modified, manufactured and shared again. The Openbike design is downloadable with a Creative Commons License.
Zero Emission. Looking to the future from an ecological perspective, trying to reduce carbon print.
Universal. The bike as an universal transport is used by millions of people all over the planet without matter your age, gender, origin or culture.
Empowered citizens
Productive cities
Open source design
Zero emission
Universal
Our project is identified with the proposal of the urban current FabCities project that seeks a new urban model in terms of sustainability in which the citizen is the main axis of change. And it launches the challenge of achieving in 2054 cities self-sufficient cities. Within this context, Openbike offers the citizens the necessary methods for manufacturing a non-polluting means of urban transport, the bicycle, by themselves.
In increasingly dense and populated cities, the use of non-polluting transport is key and essential for coexistence. On the other hand, the access we have to technology today gives us the opportunity to use manufacturing processes that were previously unattainable outside of industry.
The bicycle designs resulting from this initiative must be able to be manufactured by users using the resources of a local digital fabrication workshop (fablab) such as 3D printing and CNC cutting and reused bicycle parts.
We can access this shared digital information from anywhere in the world to materialize it locally and sustainably, using digital manufacturing methods that generate a controlled minimum amount of waste.
We do not transport materials but information.
We use the manufacture of your own bicycle as an excuse for citizens to discover other forms of production and consumption based on the circular economy, reuse and the use of resources from your own environment.
Sustainability is not something that governments deal with and that appears in the news, it is a commitment that all citizens of the world must acquire and Openbike intends to tell us in a playful way that we are actors in this story, not spectators.
Openbike shows design as the engine of change, we use an iconic object such as the bicycle so that people reflect on the power of design in the consumer society and its impact on sustainable production systems, also approaching the concept of open source design and shared design.
The materialization of all these ideas and concepts (sustainable urbanization, community, inclusion, productive city,...) in a beautiful object facilitates the approach to the project of a multitude of people who otherwise would have passed by thinking that it was not theirs. who we were talking to.
The Openbike project has taken care from the beginning of the design of both the resulting bicycles and all the communication supports, creating a website that is not simply a download platform but an experience that makes you understand the project in all its complexity.
We create aesthetically interesting objects and experiences that people feel like sharing which makes the project reach more and more people in an organic way. Thanks to this aesthetic vocation, the project has attracted the attention of various media related to design, such as Openbike has appeared in Designboom,
Openbike addresses inclusion and universality from various approaches. On the one hand, we decided to use the bicycle as the icon of the project as a totally universal means of transport. The bicycle is used daily by millions of people of any age, sex, origin, culture,... people with different mobility capacities can use bicycles adapted to their situation. It is one of the things we like the most about Openbike, which is for everyone.
On the other hand, the use of open source design, emphasizing the ability to modify, adapt and share the design, makes the project adapt to the situation of each city, of each user... the materials at your fingertips, their capacities of production, its physical situation. For example, a Cairo cycling advocacy group with its own open community workshop has made openbikes for its members by replacing 3D-printed parts with materials they can find at the local market, such as foam seat cushions.
Other users have modified the dimensions of the bike frame to adapt it to their own, or have chosen other materials such as reused material from a phenolic board façade of a school in the Basque Country in the Trespa Second Life programme. Openbike brings the concept of open and shared design, the community and DIWO closer to all audiences. Another important part of the project is transmitting its transforming capacity to the public, realizing that we can all be active agents in our cities, that we make the city together, and putting on the table the possibility that another form of consumption is possible. , our city can produce not only consume.
Starting from the principles of open design, people who develop and share knowledge, generating designs that are free on the network to be shared again, improved, modified, manufactured, ... again and again, a development and design based on use of local resources but with global techniques and tools adapted to their particular characteristics (cultural, social, material, ...). That is, the design is downloadable and modifiable by the user himself
The objective is to empower citizens as a transforming agent, putting technology at their service and prioritizing local production with local resources, which generates active and productive cities, looking to the future from an ecological perspective, trying to reduce carbon emissions to a minimum.
Openbike is a living project, in constant change, the first Openbike model was developed collaboratively, making an appeal to all citizens of San Sebastian interested in participating in this project and accompanied by Hirikilabs, the manufacturing laboratory of our city (Medialab Tabakalera) and it has been evolving since 2016 to faithfully achieve the aforementioned premises.
Since the website https://openbike.cc was launched in September/October 2021, there have been more than 3,000 downloads and students, teachers, educators, fathers, mothers, young people, retirees, have contacted us. professionals, designers, cyclists, NGOs,... from countries all over the world asking us questions about the project, sharing with us their versions, their doubts, their contributions, the satisfaction of making something of their own with their own means or simply to say hello.
Thanks to this project, people from different parts of the world are working as a community, providing local solutions to a universal design and enriching both the project and the experience of the other participants.
In 2016 we decided to develop the first Openbike model in a collaborative way, calling on all the citizens of Donostia-San Sebastián interested in participating in this project accompanied by Hirikilabs, today Medialab Tabakalera, part of the Tabakalera Center for Contemporary Culture, the citizen laboratory of Donostia-San Sebastian, our city. This first support helped us to start the project, generate a small group and develop the first Openbike model in a process that lasted three months. After that, we continue to develop the Openbike project as a personal project of our studio, Arquimaña.
In 2017, the Arquia-Próxima festival, which recognizes the most relevant projects carried out by young architects in Spain, selects Openbike as a finalist, giving the project some visibility, which led to Openbike is selected within the Uncertainty curatorial project to be part of the Spanish Pavilion in a biennale whose theme was How will we live together. That same year the project is also selected as part of the Cities exhibition curated by the architect Dominique Perrault within the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, SBAU2021, titled “CROSSROADS, Building the Resilient City”.
Thanks to the participation of the project in these two important international meetings, it received institutional support from the housing department of the Basque Government, the Donostia-San Sebastián city council, the Etxepare Institute and the Tabakalera International Center for Contemporary Culture.
This support helped us to have the necessary resources to finance a website dedicated to the project that would make access to all the information, files, etc. easier (until then we had it hosted on the website of our studio), prepare a video that summarizes in images the germ and operation of the project and cover the costs of the project's participation in both biennials reaching a multitude of people everywhere who have decided to join the openbike team and ride free.
We, Arquimaña, have been working since 2011 with digital fabrication techniques applied to design in our architecture studio. From our relationship with this fabrication tools and with open and shared design, the idea of Openbike arises, of how design and the democratization of technology can be elements that make a difference in the attempt to move towards a more sustainable model of urbanism, production and economic systems.
People from very different backgrounds have been involved in the project from the beginning. From the team of graphic designers and programmer for the online platform, going through film maker to different cultural agents and journalists interested in the project. One of the important aspects that gives meaning to Openbike is the fact of manufacturing the openbike within your city, with resources from your city. Thus, local fablabs, carpenters, small neighborhood bike shops, second-hand and recycling centers, traditional hardware stores,... in short, the small productive fabric of the city have been involved in all the manufacturing processes. And of course the people who have wanted to join the project and build their own openbike, cycling fans, educators, institutes, schools, architects, engineers, handymen, NGOs, groups of friends, retirees,...Openbike brings digital manufacturing technology and opensource design concepts to all kinds of audiences.
Openbike has obtained the following recognitions:
- Finalist in Arquia-Proxima, a festival that rewards the best achievements of young Spanish architects.
- Part of the Spanish Pavilion in the Biennale di Architettura di Venezia 2021
- Part of the Cities Expo in the Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism of Seoul SBAU 2021
- Part of the expo A vision from Spain. New European Bauhaus in The Festival, Bruselas, 2022
- Honorable Mention in the Design Educates Awards 2021 that recognize, showcase, and promote globally the best ideas and implementations of architecture and design that can educate.
- Premio CCS HKJ Sariak 2022, sustainable cities and communities award granted by the Official Association of Architects of Gipuzkoa, Basque Country, COAVN-GI
- Part of the expo Rehogar X, in Barcelona, Spain, a collective exhibition and an annual gathering focussing on open design and reuse as tools for a social transformation in which better resource use, respect for people and the environment are key issues.
- Presence in specialized design media such as Designboom and international general media.
We believe that the greatest impact is the interest aroused in a multitude of citizens through the initial surprise generated by the possibility of making their own bike and made of wood, no less! they come to a reflection about how we live in cities, how our way of consumption and production works, what would happen if we gave local production and the circular economy a chance and if citizens began to consider ourselves as agents of change .
Openbike is innovative in several ways, to begin with, it breaks the established order in the production-product-consumer relationship, generating a new relationship based on learning in which the final consumer is the producer.
Openbike also generates a new way of exposing a dense problem in a playful, fun and visually attractive way that makes you approach the project without prejudice and that once inside leads you to deep reflections that you did not expect.
We believe that openbike has generated a methodology applicable to other products that can lead us to reflections of a different kind.
Openbike starts from the exposition of the universal concepts that govern the project that, once determined, materialize in replicable and shareable bicycle designs.
All the designs are published on the project's own online platform, https://openbike.cc, where anyone can freely access the digital manufacturing files, the list of materials and tools necessary for manufacturing, and the set up manual. All this presented in a playful and easily understandable way for anyone, whether or not they are familiar with digital manufacturing.
All this information has a creative commons license and a contact email for possible questions or suggestions, we also ask the members of the openbike team to share their modifications and improvements of the project with the rest.
The openbike methodology is easily applicable to other projects.
It is about identifying a use or need of the city or citizens and proposing its open and shared design through an online platform.
You could think of other elements that favor sustainable and inclusive life in our cities, creating, for example, open source kitchens for the community, designing small self-producing shelters, other elements of sustainable mobility,... the key is to reach the citizenship with the concepts that the project transmits.
Openbike faces global problems such as the environmental situation, life in cities, consumerism,... with a local vision, with citizens making decisions and acting on their own, generating a circular economy in their city, supporting trade local and being self-aware of how their actions and decisions regarding consumption, means of transport, etc. affect the planet globally.
