According to this year’s Maker Faire, the future will bring living spaces that actually reflect how we live, smart urban planning, LED-embedded fashion, and so much more. (Image, original)
The 9th Annual Maker Faire took place in The New York Hall of Science in Queens this year. I was one of hundreds of thousands of creatives, tinkerers, and artisans overtook the grounds. The place was electric.
Though the Maker Movement may have started with tinkerers and roboticists in mind, it’s expanded to include anyone who makes anything. Workshops at the Faire included opportunities to make homemade bitters and lovie monsters, and learning basic soldering and circuitry. No matter which workshops or talk participants’ attended, the Faire had an undercurrent: what life will look like in the future. The question came up again and again, and the makers at the Faire were determined to answer it with their own neat inventions.
Here are the five ways Makers are changing the world right now.
Changing How We Live
Source: ORI
MIT’s Media Lab is always creating new multidisciplinary solutions to everyday programs.
In 2014, Ken Larson’s CityHome project was widely received for its novel way of looking at apartment living. Instead of taking a 300 sqft apartment and dividing it into living, sleeping, cooking, dining, and bathing quarters, MIT used things like sliding islands and hidden furniture to give apartment dwellers the option to change the layout of the room with the wave of a hand.
The first demo of this concept was released in 2014. Since then, the idea has been commercialized via startup ORI.
At the Maker Faire, MIT showcased how it continues to push the limits of this concept, for dorm rooms, fancy penthouse condos, and luxury apartments. Some of the new features show include the capability to frost glass windows for added privacy, beds that tuck away into the ceiling, and couches that disappear into the wall.
The lab isn’t the only team working on designing homes that reflect how we live. Baitasi of Beijing and PKMN Architecture in Spain (pronounced Pacman) made a splash with their moveable walls that turn one room into five. There are many ways to crack and egg, and other organizations have ideas also about how to make spaces better reflect how we live.
The National Building Museum opened an exhibit early this year titled, “Making Room: Housing for a Changing America,” that challenges people to ask themselves if their homes reflect how they really live. The exhibit states the nuclear family-unit is dying, so why not let the design of the nuclear home die also? According to the NBM, living situations have shifted from single-family units to multi-generational families and friends/roommates living under one roof. So why not change spaces to reflect that? The exhibit will be open through January 2019, so if you’re in the DC-area, check it out.
The book Life at Home in the 21st Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors also took a look at how to better support the modern-day living. The book is based on an intense 9-year study directed by UCLA, and tracked how 32 LA-based families actually used their living quarters. As it turns out, the kitchen operates as the central hub of a home, and most other common areas remain vacant. So why not make the kitchen the largest room of the house, and even place the couch and bookshelf there?
In short, times have changed. It’s time for architecture and interior design to reflect that.
Tiny Houses
(Image via Today)
All hail Tiny Houses. This year’s Maker Faire brought in tiny house makers from all over the country. Set ups included everything from colonial-period gypsy wagons to converted shipping containers, school buses, and mobile homes. And with technology like incinerating toilets, it’s easier than ever to ditch the city and get off the grid.
Tiny Houses are a fun concept, but did you know the micro-houses aren’t just popular with hipsters and millennials? The designs are actually gaining popularity with empty nesters and seniors, as the homes are affordable, safe, and allow them to continue to live semi-independently even if their home is parked in their son’s backyard.
Urban Planning
Source: MIT
Another theme at the Maker Faire was revolutionizing urban planning. On a macro-scale, each city has its own challenges (e.g. traffic, lack of pedestrian walkways, empty real estate, etc.). MIT’s City Science lab created a way to map a city across various dimensions, such as diversity, education, security, and healthcare. With this map, developers know in which areas the city needs to develop to support the people. It’s a concept that has been gaining ground with city planners across the world and could revolutionize how we build cities and develop public programs.
MIT also created a 3D representation of a map of Cambridge using LEGO Brick-like building blocks. The map responds in real-time to allow planners to see how moving a public building from one area to another impacts traffic. Planners can also see things like how adding schools or hospitals impact poor neighborhoods.
Public Spaces
Public spaces are another area makers are working on revolutionizing. We’ve become an isolated society, and part of that is not having public spaces to gather and create a sense of community. This is something Makers from Kansas City to Seoul, Korea are working on correcting. This includes making cities more fun with interactive art, widening sidewalks to accommodate for things like autonomous vehicles, and creating more spaces for engaging with local government.
Fashion & Wearables
Source: Katya Lee
The big event of Friday’s Maker Faire program was a futuristic fashion show featuring wearables, high-tech clothing and accessories, and otherworldly entertainment.
Katya Lee, a Russian pop star and fashion designer, paid the Faire a visit and performed wearing a light-up space suit designed by maker Aaron Trocola. The event featured futuristic 3D-printed jewelry and shoes, chainmail dresses, and performances by street artists using 3D-printed instruments. The show projected future fashion to include lots of spiky jewelry, 3D-printed accessories, and LED-filled fabric. If that doesn’t excite you, go out and make your own fashion and show it off at the next Maker Faire.
After all, the future is what we Make it.