OpenLab Hamburg

15/09/2026

🚀 Six years of Fab City Research — and what a finale!

On Sept 10, we celebrated the closing of our dtec.bw & EU Next Generation funded project “Fab City – Decentralized, Digital Production for Urban Value Creation” with our amazing project partners.

📊 Project lead Dr. Sonja Buxbaum-Conradi took us through six years of research — the places, people, and prototypes that shaped it all.

🎤 A panel with Martin Duensing, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörg Knieling, Kristina Kölling, Mathias Rüsch, Karen Löhnert & Lennard Stoever explored the future of local production: it’s about resilience, circularity, and reimagining our cities.

👥 Our Gallery Walk brought it all to life — OpenLabs, open-source hardware, microfactories & circular production, shown as real prototypes and tools.

🏆 We wrapped with the MAKER CHALLENGE Hamburg 2026 Award Ceremony — a glimpse into the next generation of urban innovation.

The project may be ending, but Fab City Hamburg keeps building. 🌐

Huge thanks to everyone who made these six years happen 💛

17/08/2026

Forget Nike, On Running, Asics, and the rest—Juraj Šuška and Veronika Suškova Krahůlíková took us into their world—a “hobby” that, fueled by their seemingly boundless creativity, their love of running, and a great deal of passion, has grown into a global open-source project.

Our participants from the fields of product design, making, and sustainability were able to experience firsthand—through prototypes, materials, and sample shoes—what it takes to develop “the world’s fastest open-source running shoe—made by you.”

The principle behind it: local and decentralized production, anywhere in the world. From New York to Senegal, the community is growing steadily—the two of them can barely keep up with the news. Soon there will be an open Messenger group where everyone can exchange ideas. This also applies to those interested in Hamburg: Open source means that the more people from different disciplines take the initiative to contribute ideas, help build, and share, the stronger the project grows.

The production data for your own shoe size is already available for download on the website openfootwear.com —and brand-new in Hamburg: the first Open Footwear children’s shoes, individually decorated by their own daughters.

From FABRIC, the creative family from Brno headed on to the MAKER FAIRE in Hanover. The next workshop (including making your own shoes + a group walk along the Alster) is definitely coming—stay tuned for details via our newsletter. Thanks to Juraj, Veronika, and all the guests for this inspiring evening!

21/05/2026

21/05/2026

is Europe’s most significant festival at the intersection of technology, politics, media, and society — and we were there to bring the future of production into that conversation.

As part of the GIG Makerspace, we presented prototypes from our work across , , LOCILAMP, Production Next Door and more — and invited visitors to reflect on three questions via an interactive installation: What do you wish existed? If you could change one thing about how products are made, what would it be? What are you not allowed to make? The responses ranged from the deeply practical to the systemic to the imaginative.

Three sessions from a packed programme — a few impulses:
»Bundesbank, Bots und Bundeswehr« was a sharp reminder that who controls production systems, who owns the data, who defines the standards are inseparable from questions of geopolitical sovereignty. Prof. Dr. Gabi Dreo Rodosek: critical thinking skills are more necessary than ever — and the risk of becoming a “digital colony” is real and underestimated.

»Closing the Loop« with Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider: a circular economy requires both technical innovation and institutional will.

»Never Give You Up: From Crisis to Competence« — how CADUS e.V. translates fieldwork from Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan into resilience knowledge. The parallels to distributed, low-resource manufacturing are striking.

re:publica26 confirmed: how things are made, by whom, and under what conditions — these are not technical questions alone. They are political, social, and infrastructural.

21/01/2026

New TECH AFFAIR podcast episode released today: „Pop-up factories – from vision to reality“

How can mobile and temporary production units contribute to greater flexibility and resilience? In the latest episode of „Tech Affair – Industry for Future,“ our colleague Manuel Moritz and Susanne Vernim from Tulip Interfaces explore what makes a pop-up factory, how to implement mobile production units in practice, and what solutions they offer for current manufacturing challenges.

Listen now – available on all popular streaming services and at https://vdw.de/podcast/folge-24-pop-up-fabriken-von-vision-zur-realitaet/

Thank you VDW (Verein Deutscher Werkzeugmaschinenfabriken) for having us!

15/12/2025

The End of Open Source? ⚖️

Not quite – but the new EU Product Liability Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/2853) is raising important questions for the Open Source Hardware community.

Tarmio Frei and Greta Sparzynski from the .ipcenter explored the implications of the directive, its planned implementation in Germany, and how it could reshape liability for Open Source Hardware, including:

➡️ the role and legal treatment of digital manufacturing files
➡️ distinctions between commercial and non-commercial distribution
➡️ potential liability exemptions

Hosted by the Open Source Hardware Innovation Platform () on Dec 3rd 2025, the discussion made clear: liability will remain a central challenge for open source projects, developers, makers, start-ups, and researchers.

This session builds on our work at the within the Fab City Hamburg project, funded by dtec.bw and financed by the European Union –

⚙️📄 Presentation materials:
https://lnkd.in/eSq3fGmX

👉 Your point of contact at the New Production Institute: JC Mariscal, Lasse Burmeister

Many thanks to OSHOP for the invitation and the great exchange. We look forward to continuing the conversation! ✨

02/12/2025

We are so excited to share that we are featured in the newest (US), Volume 95 – Guide to Boards 2026! Make: is the premier publication for maker projects, skill-building tutorials, in-depth reviews, and inspirational stories – accessible by makers all around the globe.

In this issue, four full pages are dedicated to our OpenLab Starter Kit (OLSK) and the amazing people from behind it. The article highlights how the open-source digital fabrication toolkit enables anyone to set up a replicable Open Lab and experiment with future-ready production technologies.

A big thank you to Daniele and the Make: editorial team and to everyone who has been part of the OpenLab journey so far. 🌍⚙️

📖 Check out the issue: https://makezine.com/volume/make-volume-95-guide-to-boards-2026/

⚙️ Learn more about the OLSK: https://www.inmachines.net/open-lab-starter-kit

The project is funded by dtec.bw – Digitalization and Technology Research Center of the Bundeswehr. dtec.bw is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.

OpenSourceHardware DigitalFabrication

25/11/2025

Yesterday, we teamed up with the .online Competence Center Future Business to host a Future Day at Berlin’s Futurium, focusing on “New Materials for Mechanical and Plant Engineering.”

New materials are key drivers of innovation, efficiency, and sustainability. Companies that identify early which materials will matter can focus research, optimize production, and secure a competitive edge. But how can these developments be spotted before they hit the market?

Our project, “Value Creation Radar,” addresses exactly this challenge. Together with Helmut-Schmidt-Universität/Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg, Fraunhofer ISI and Institut für Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung e.V. - ISF München, we are developing an AI-powered horizon scanning process that detects weak signals in large data sets, highlighting emerging trends early. By combining algorithmic analysis with domain expertise, we turn raw data into actionable insights.

In collaboration with the VDMA, we applied this approach to mechanical and plant engineering. A crowd voting process among VDMA member companies helped evaluate and prioritize the identified material signals. At the Future Day, we discussed the most critical developments with materials scientists and industry experts to classify what will truly shape the sector.

The goal: a radar that not only reveals what is technologically possible but also what is strategically relevant for companies.

Learn more about our research:
https://newproductioninstitute.de/en/valuecreationradar

15/11/2025

Our colleague Marcello is attending the Fab Lab Asia Network meetup (FAN2025) these days in Shenzhen, China. As part of the program, we took on the challenge of presenting the Open Lab Ecosystem in just 60 seconds to the FAN2025 audience.

Over five days, the event brings together Fab Lab representatives from across Asia to share updates, strengthen collaboration, and showcase the region’s creative power within the global Fab Lab movement. The local ecosystem and program look very promising, including: Seeed Studio Agile Manufacturing Center, HLH Prototypes Co Ltd, Maker Faire Shenzhen, TroubleMaker Shenzhen, M5Stack Technology, Fab Academy, Fab City Foundation, Mushroom Cloud Makerspace, Fablab Jogja and more.

We’re excited to hear Marcello’s insights and learnings – and if you’re at FAN2025 as well, feel free to reach out to him on site and connect.

🔗 Conference page: https://fablabs.asia/fan2025

🔗 Learn more about the Open Lab Ecosystem: https://newproductioninstitute.de/en/fab-city

The Fab City research project is funded by dtec.bw – Digitalization and Technology Research Center of the Bundeswehr. dtec.bw is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.

04/11/2025

🌍 Technology Justice – Building a Fairer Technological Future

How can we ensure that access to technology is not a privilege for a few, but a right for all?

Mohammed Omer, Doctoral Candidate at the New Production Institute at Helmut-Schmidt-University, is dedicating his research to exactly this question.

His focus: Technology Justice – equitable access to the tools and knowledge that enable production and innovation.

Mohammed’s work empowers communities to build, adapt, and own the technologies they use – paving the way toward technological sovereignty.

⚙️ Technology Justice in Manufacturing

Manufacturing is vital for sustainable development. Advances in manufacturing have powerful spillover effects across multiple industries — driving innovation, job creation, and resilience.
However, the means to advanced manufacturing are not equally distributed. Mohammed’s research directly addresses this imbalance, exploring how open and inclusive manufacturing systems can unlock opportunities for communities worldwide.

As coordinator of pioneering open-source initiatives such as the Open Lab Starter Kit (, github.com/Open-Lab-Starter-Kit) and the Open-Source Metal 3D Printer Project, he bridges research, design, and implementation to democratize access to production technologies worldwide.

Through participatory action research, co-design, and distributed manufacturing, Mohammed explores how open-source industrial machines can foster sustainable industrialisation in low-resource contexts.
Beyond his research in Hamburg, Mohammed is a Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) Fellow at the Yale Global Justice Program (), a Visiting Researcher at the ’s Judge Business School, and a University Innovation Fellow at d.school.

💡 His journey exemplifies a new generation of researchers who see technology not only as a driver of progress – but as a tool for justice, participation, and self-determination.