Pietro Fareri

Access to the tools of digital fabrication has been responsible for a revolution in practices of making. The growing proliferation of makerspaces has been described as the foundation for a coming industrial revolution that promises to address the shortcomings of mass production by providing an alternative in the form of distributed manufacture. This would see makerspaces join existing business and other productive infrastructure as manufacturing hubs to achieve distributed micro-factories in urban centres.

It is expected that the implementation of such systems would carry benefits for the collective as well as the individual, in environmental, social and financial terms. However, despite their potential, makerspaces - and practices of distributed manufacture more broadly - are yet to be popularised beyond the confines of the social groups that traditionally populate them.

This research aims to understand the barriers preventing the mainstreaming of distributed manufacturing practices and popularisation of makerspaces in the context of clothing production. It builds on existing literature on circular systems and urban manufacturing by prototyping potential distributed approaches in order to observe the challenges that qualify them in practice. The findings produced by this research will deepen the understanding necessary for the clothing industry to achieve the goals it is increasingly expected to meet.