The manufacture revolution is happening, design is at service of user-makers: DO IT with your hands!
Change your mindset: everyday use products don't have to be made by industry. FAZ com as tuas mãos (DO IT with your hands) are easy to build designs and classes to demystify wood furniture making and empower people to do their own. Each piece is designed to be easy to build, with basic tools and easy-to-find materials in short periods of time.
Your handwork provides more gratification than mass-produced goods consumption.
National
Portugal
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Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As an individual
First name: Mariana Last name: Costa e Silva Gender: Female Nationality: Portugal Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Av. Combatentes da Grande Guerra, nº61 5ºesq. Town: Leiria Postal code: 2400-123 Country: Portugal Direct Tel:+351964380758 E-mail:marianacostaesilva@gmail.com Website:http://marianacostaesilva.com/faz/
FAZ com as tuas mãos (DO IT with your hands) is a participatory process to produce goods. FAZ is easy to make furniture and toy models, with easy-to-find materials, basic tools and classes to teach people how to do them in short periods of time.
Maybe products don't have to be made by industry - with the right designs there are a lot of everyday goods we can do ourselves. If the design is focused on accessible and affordable materials and techniques without overlooking aesthetics we can shift from shopping to a gratifying mindfulness experience that increases people's self-esteem.
FAZ produces locally, with whatever is available nearby, prefer renewable, biodegradable, low carbon footprint and/or from circular materials, use basic and generalized use tools, empower people to do it themselves and share designs. In this sense, I designed a chair, a stool, a bench, a table, children's chair and table, kids classroom furniture, playground equipment and toys that balance functionality and aesthetics with self-building values. Each piece is made of: wood; used palettes; raw or reclaimed planks; standard worldwide retailer cutted wood; roadside growing twigs of invasive species; used paper or plastic packaging.
Workshop classes happen regularly in Leiria and Angra with a public calendar, and also, pedagogical services of municipal councils and museums, fablabs, schools, social and artistic associations subcontract these trainings to offer to their communities. Some are for adults, others for children, same for both and others for communities with the aim of not only supplying themselves with goods but also team building and increasing people's resilience by acquiring critical thinking about industrial products.
The gratification of doing something with our own hands and the fast and easy approach to woodworking and toy making experienced in the FAZ workshops reveals DIY as a real and desirable alternative to shopping.
diy
participatory
zero-waste
workshops
distributed design
The mainstream production-distribution-consumption chain is broken! Let's change it to: local materials, common available tools and production on demand. In order to feed mass consumption some production workforce lives in degrading conditions; low quality materials are used and the entire chain is dependent on fossil fuels. I don’t want to make part of it!
As a participatory process, if you want a FAZ piece of furniture you have to premeditate its acquisition by registering for a workshop. You are involved in the whole process and thus affectively connected to the piece you built. You don't discard it easily. The bond of an object with a story and human handprints, associated with the gratification of producing something usefull increases our self-esteem and creates a bond that makes the goods priceless.
The fact that consumers become workshop participants makes them experience how easy it is to build and repair everyday objects. The mindset about objects shifts, and consumers are empowered to be active agents in the production of goods, valuing discarded materials and stuff as a resource for new creations.
Beyond that, FAZ designs use materials easy to find in the exact amount, from local sources or by just upcycling what is available. Mostly, FAZ furniture designs use wood that grows less than 100 km away. Pine wood in Leiria and cryptomeria in Terceira, Azores. Beyond that, some FAZ models use upcycled materials, such as pallets, boards from building demolitions or old furniture, paper and plastic bottles. Another "green" material that FAZ workshops use are the branches of invasive plants such as acacia (melanoxylon) and cane (Arundo donax). Investigation is being made to create new models and processes from this free and very abundant materials. The development of new processes that use digital fabrication to build furniture with these natural and irregular materials was initiated in the Iatelier program of the Crafting Europe initiative (see 2º and 3º link)
How to offer a real alternative to buying furniture?
We live in a society with a wide range of object choices to reach the same functionality. An alternative has to be as appealing as those. For that goal I have designed the pieces in a clean and contemporary aesthetic, very honest in the way it is built, with enough character to be constituted as a brand. This, with the aim of creating objects of desire, boosting people's attention and workshop participation. Most participants are attracted by the bold and original FAZ designs. Some even believe that they are investing in a signature design piece.
It’s more than an object, it is an experience.
FAZ is not just a set of easy to do furniture models, are workshops for beginners. A participatory learning model creates an immersive experience of how easy, fast and gratifying this handwork is. Participants experience how feasible these furniture pieces are to make. The design takes into account the difficulty and time of each operation, as well as the motor skills of the participants. These are designed to be enjoyed to build. Each piece takes between 30 minutes, in the case of the stool, to 6 hours, like the armchair, to be made. Techniques in use are easy and fast learning curve, therefore you feel instant gratification by the immediate results of having a ready to use piece of furniture. Furthermore, the gratification of doing something with our own hands increases self-esteem.
Training courses are also an opportunity for coaching: participants are encouraged to put "perfectionism" into perspective and enjoy the pleasure of doing something without too much commitment; working posture and body awareness are also taught; personal initiative and curiosity are encouraged; problems are relativized and solutions are reinforced; the children's accompanying adults are led to work in team and value the children's determination; in community classes people are invited to assume responsibilities and functions within the group
FAZ production methods are chosen for their accessibility in means of equipment and skills. To become a widespread practice, making our own furniture has to be as accessible as knitting yourself a piece of clothing: no special installations are needed, everyone is invited, there are classes for all ages and you can easily have size custom pieces.
Wood has an excellent cost-efficiency ratio, compared with metal or plastics to make furniture. Apart from that, the tools are cheaper to purchase. The wood used in most workshops is pine, but it can be any other cheap softwood. With the goal to make it as accessible as possible, I'm investigating the use of free materials, like the Acacia (an invasive species) that I already use in the branch stool workshop (image 1). In the workshops where the furniture isn’t meant to be transported, upcycling pallets is a very cheap option.
The chosen tools to each workshop depend on the size and age range of the participants group, taking in consideration safety, adequacy of tasks to motor skills and attention needed to teach the techniques. Children are in focus at FAZ because they are an essential part of the mindset change that is intended to reach a less carbon-emissive lifestyle. Children are also implicitly influenced towards gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, because I am a female trainer in woodworks, which is very unusual in Portugal.
Some FAZ workshops are designed for a common benefit. In these, people are involved in identifying needs and building solutions. Is the case of the MAKE a happy school workshop (image 3) (see citizens benefiting).
Other, quicker workshops were designed for public and social institutions to offer the public to participate: paper kite construction, cereal box toy masks, PET bottle windmill, Christmas and Easter paper pulp motifs, kittens houses (image 6), fast stool, kindergarten classroom furniture (image 2) and branch stool (image 1) workshops.
With FAZ workshops citizens and organizations have been able to equip themselves at a cost lower than the market, in addition they benefit from the social event itself and they are empowered with practical knowledge that they can implement on their own.
Part of the workshops are meant to institutions, designed to be built in community, where participants contribute by volunteering. The “MAKE a pallet bench” is an example, designed to furnish the A Nossa Horta, Leiria garden with the aid of their users, people trade their work for the benefit of all and in return learn how to make it.
Another example is the workshop “MAKE a happy school” (image 3), Escola Básica de Arrabalde, Leiria (see 1º PDF) didn't have any playground equipment for the kids. In that sense I have designed a playhouse, children tables, a balance labyrinth and a sandbox to be made by the parents. Leroy Merlin, a wholesaler, was pleased to offer tools and materials as part of their social responsibility, a transportation company offered a bunch of pallets, the city council and Kanji Emotions, a local association, made the marketing. It took one day of work, teachers, functionaries, parents, family, friends and children, all together, contributed. The sense of joy, pride and self empowerment were the main factors to make this community more resilient.
As in this case, at the NEB Festival (image 2), the passing public built benches and tables for 5 year olds, these were specifically designed to respond to the needs presented by the Université des Familles.
A broader involvement of the civil society is being planned in cooperation with a9)))) Célula e Membrana, a Leiria’s artistic association, with the creation of a municipal workshop which, like a public library, will provide the population with the means to build and repair products, as well as learning traditional crafts consolidated with digital fabrication with the support of local artisans.
FAZ has individual and institutional stakeholders. Individual ones have access to a public agenda of workshops: armchair, table (image 5), stool, kids chair and desk (image 4), occurring in Leiria and Angra do Heroísmo cities. These events can also be scheduled by participants for gatherings, birthdays or to get furnished, these can take place in their own facilities.
Workshops for institutions are usually designed according to needs, facilities, public and/or available materials. An example is the workshop MAKE a branches stool (image 1), designed for Associação Casa d'Árvore - ABCNatur for a large group of unaccompanied children and low resources, so only scissors and a brush were used and the materials was invasive acacias from their backyard and old cotton fabric. Later this workshop was also held with some adaptations for the Portuguese Red Cross - Côa (see 2º PDF) for a group of elderly people. Because it is suitable for a large number of participants, not having tools available for them all and low resources. The size of the bench was adapted and a handcrafted stuffing made from used clothes collected by the institution.
Another example of design involvement is the workshop MAKE with 3d printing, which was design to Buinho Creative Hub as team building for Erasmus FabLabs makers, that is, participants with a high technical level, to equip a children's classroom with chairs, desks and bookcases using 3D printed fasteners. These pieces were built in just one morning.
Here, as in the NEB Festival, the idea is always to associate the social event with a cause. I, as a professional designer, design products considering ergonomics and safety to be produced by volunteers who have fun and learn skills for a more resilient and environmentally friendly lifestyle.
In an ongoing process, I am working with Casa do Povo de Sta. Bárbara, financed by Cresaçor, in order to involve the population in the construction of equipment for the institution's elderly and children.
The fields of knowledge involved in FAZ are product design, crafts and education.
Until the 18th century handicrafts were the only way to produce goods. With industrial manufacturing and mass production, products became increasingly competitive and technically refined, moving the process of producing goods away from the common citizen. In industrial production the Design Department integrates marketing values with the company's specific manufacturing, engineering of materials, intended function of the product, packaging and distribution. A designer can also do it in artisanal production and valuing its qualities: craftsmanship as an aesthetic factor, adaptability to raw materials, local and customized production.
A step further is taken when we transform the user into the maker and this is where education becomes essential. When we intend to carry out a manual activity, it requires practice, we have to invest time and research to improve the results. The workshops are a way to speed up this process. At FAZ the focus is to build a useful object, more than mastering techniques, the participant learns to use basic and very accessible tools and materials, how to handle them safely and transform it into an object that we normally associate more with consumption than with craftsmanship.
I, Mariana Costa e Silva, am the only person working at FAZ. My professional and personal career has involved me in all these areas. To design a workshop, I interview the host to learn about their needs, and involve participant-users from the beginning, either for problem definition, discussion of solutions and creative exercise. Then I research existing solutions, consult experts, design and prototype. I also develop the tools, techniques and molds that allow participants to quickly and safely make FAZ pieces. Training is a personal skill that I have developed, I love taking an active role in educating in the neglected field of basic crafts and sustainability.
In FAZ the innovation is to use design practice tools to conceive objects, not for industry, but to a different way to produce everyday things. We have come detached from the way things are made because of the super offer of affordable goods. In some cases, either because of the nature of the technique involved, or because of the easy access to materials, industry didn’t leave in oblivion the artisanal way to do things. Sewing clothes is an example. Unlike it, woodworking hasn't been very present as an option to be self-made.
Now society tends to take a step back because of the ecologic emergence awareness or just because we are saturated with meaningless goods. There is a trend to search for objects with craft value and a behind story. In this sense, DIY culture became very popular because of its affordability and people's desire of self-fulfillment in decelerating hobby activities, fortifying their freedom and autonomy.
Despite the huge offer made available on the internet, DIY projects tend to be aesthetically unappealing. I struggle myself to find one there I’ll like to have. In FAZ designs I look for a compromise between aesthetics, functionality and the particular way these objects are made. I try not to offer just another crafty DIY idea from Youtube, but an elegant piece suitable to be on sale in a design shop.
Considering the workshops, there is a great offer in the field of visual arts and crafts.
Textiles, visual and decorative arts make up the vast majority. At the other extreme of accessibility and affordability of tools and materials are workshops in traditional crafts such as carpentry, basketry or ceramics. FAZ offers an intermediate option: the objects are original, bold and much more accessible than the advanced courses. Besides, more than teaching a technique, it offers tailor-made solutions for team building and furnishing places. Exploring traditional craft, 3D printing, industrial processes and structural qualities of discarded materials.
FAZ workshops are always tailored to the location, group of beneficiaries and context. The workshops that take place in Angra do Heroísmo use the local wood: cryptomeria in standard marketed dimensions. The design of the armchair, for example, has changed to adapt to the particular characteristics of this wood. In Leiria, local pine wood is used. Even within each workshop, the pieces often have to be according to the percentile of each participant. This is very evident in the workshop MAKE a children's chair for families (image 4), children between 6 and 10 years old have up to 40 cm difference in height. For the MAKE a children desk workshop (image 4) I even designed a model that "grows", having two heights.
Other specific contexts determine the theme, such as at the Beach Library in Pedrogão, Leiria, where children built paper kites and in another workshop, they built windmills from PET bottles (image 6). If the event is open to the public, as in the NEB Festival or Maker Faire Lisbon, the design of the built pieces reflects the fact that the moments of concentration of the participants are very short.
As they stand, the FAZ models are already likely to be replicated by other interested parties. A designer or maker can easily adapt them to the tools and materials available in their context and then teach local participants.
A very interesting path that FAZ could take with the right investment, is to provide detailed instructions and drawings online so these workshops can be replicated for other communities. These plattform could be a network of local adaptations in order to exponentially evolve into: greener materials; wider source of circular materials; alternatives for unavailable tools; other techniques; bigger range of objects; different aesthetics; and useful documentation to replicate workshops. Existing platforms such as Wikifactory, Maker Movement and Distributed Design Market Platform can be used.
Are there alternatives to consumption? How can I be more sustainable when purchasing furniture or toys? Let's take a practical class and find out how.
FAZ intends to fulfill the need to have distinct activities to satisfy our desire of self-fulfillment and deceleration. In this sense, and like shopping, the reward must be quick. The reward in the FAZ workshops is not the result of prolonged persistence. I want FAZ to be a real alternative to acquire a good, and therefore, it is fun, relaxed, useful and educational.
The place where the FAZ workshops take place must be pleasant, it cannot be noisy and be well lit. The number of participants must be directly related to the available space and the need for trainer support for the required tasks. This is a time for socializing too! It is important to contextualize this moment with the presentation of the trainer's path and the FAZ story. In small groups and longer classes, participants should also introduce themselves to meet each other. It is important to respect breaks, meals and even offer a drink.
With regard to the transmission of knowledge, our day-to-day life is overloaded with information, to counterbalance this the FAZ workshops have the support of templates and molds for the most detailed tasks. The drawings look more like IKEA or Lego step-by-step assembly instructions than technical information. Participants are encouraged to synchronize the construction phases: and the most prompt are encouraged to help those with more difficulties, as well as to teamwork on complex tasks. In workshops for families I teach parents how to help their children. In the community workshops, I delegate surveillance or support functions.
Sustainability values are implicitly transmitted: on registration, I ask to bring used packages to upcycle; I demonstrate that plastic-coated paper cannot be turned into pulp; "These branches are from acacia, an invasive tree"; "If you want to discard your kite, you should separate the tail".
We live in a world of super-performing products, in infinite variations, available in a range of prices for the convenience of a “click”. By the way, we're creating brutal amounts of waste that we can't handle. All this easeness isn't avoiding a feeling of overload that we've all felt at some point. Meanwhile, a growing group of people are seeking slow-life in a minimalist lifestyle closer to the zero-waste ideal.
We have to review what is truly important for our lives, reduce the amount of products we consume, allow the rest of humanity to live in dignified conditions and ensure Earth survival. A significant part of our well-being comes from socializing and feeling productive. We could simply "fill" all the products needed in our daily lives with more enriching experiences than simply “going to the mall”: “This beanie was knitted by my mam”; “This second-hand dresser was painted with my husband for my daughters' “; “This cutting board was made at the workshop where I met my friend”... If you have painting classes in your city, why not take classes to do really useful stuff? Design can rethink and adapt the process of producing objects to a more manual way. FabLabs did it on a technological basis, they teach you how to repair electrical appliances! Can you believe it!?
Like FabLabs, I chose a small business model replicable worldwide. The FAZ models are documented in a universal format and can be licensed for use by other trainers to teach at their locations. Transferability and replicability are also guaranteed by the minimum requirements of the facilities needed to build the FAZ pieces.
Material choices also address the challenge of “going greener”: the pine trees from the wood I use grow less than 100km away from where I’m established. The kite sticks and stool twigs are invasive species that grow on the side of the road. Cereal box cardboard toy mask PET bottle windmill and pallets workshops make part of an endless and universal source of materials: garbage.
AZ have developed 20 different workshop models, with 31 different product models, in 47 events, 502 pieces have been made by more than 450 participants.
FAZ is a set of principles to divert people's attention from consumerism, offering a viable alternative. Along the way, people discover a rewarding activity. They take a more sustainable path, becoming more aware and active citizens in a greener economy. In this sense, the benefits are:
Shifting from "buy" to "do it"
The good quality of the objects built in the workshops means that, at the time of the purchase decision, the option of a DIY object is considered by most of the participants. Institutions choose to offer a workshop rather than to buy gifts. Some ask to redesign models to their needs or available materials. Others make classes at their places as a way to furnish and as a social event.
Handwork to self-esteem
The gratification achieved by the participants is almost additive, they repeat the experience. A big part of them have started making woodworking after the classes. Some repeat workshops to make different models, or even, the same one, again.
Prefer local
Orders for my woodwork have increased, people value buying something locally produced by an artisan rather than buying a cheap item on the internet.
Value materials
“A discarded board is a find”, the participants of the workshops look at the waste materials as an opportunity: "What can I do with this?". Workshop participants value the pieces they make much more than the ones they buy, as they are emotionally connected due to the whole experience.
The objectives for this year are to increase the number of workshops in partnership with Municipal Councils, educational services of museums, social or ecological institutions.
The consolidation of this initiative is being prepared in partnership with Associação Artística a9)))) Célula e Membrana with an application to the Creative Europe program for the creation of a municipal workshop in Leiria
