Thema About Restrictions and Creativity DIY – Contours of a New
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No. 3 2012 Magazine for a sustainable economy © istockphoto.com © Thema Do-it-yourself From Hand Axes to 3D Printers Standing on One’s Own Feet Should you really DIY? About restrictions and creativity DIY – Contours of a new living and economic culture Subsistence Reloaded – For More Sustainability?! Becoming a DIY enthusiast: how to turn an idea into a sustainable company Brew it yourself! The Aesthetics of Do-It-Yourself Medium: factory Magazin Format: 297x210 mm + 3 mm Beschnitt, 4c DU: 26.9.12 Die Verantwortung fürs Geld kann man am Bankschalter abgeben, muss man aber nicht. Geld ist ein soziales Gestaltungsmittel — wenn wir es gemeinsam dazu machen. Machen Sie’s gut! Werden Sie Mitglied. e .d ls .g w ww das macht Sinn Editorial More Do-it-yourself Michelle Obama is into DIY, as is her husband. The First Lady planted a garden at the White House and added some beehives. By planting this garden, she is promoting the concept of community gardens. With the bees’ honey, the US President brews his own beer: a Honey Brown Ale. Its recipe has been published by the White House, so that everyone has access to it and it is said to be not bad at all. Urban gardening, do-it-yourself and the collaborative revolution are the ‘green’ topics of the feature pages over the last two years. No doubt there is a trend towards people working more, and this does not refer to paid full-time work. In these times, when nearly everything can be done digitally, doing something with your hands is a growing social phenom- enon, doing more yourself and doing it together with others. Do-it-your- © Henrik Stromberg self is not just an attitude. Editorial In fab labs, hacker spaces or repair cafés, a cul- tured and self-confident elite encounters people whose financial and manual skills are not sufficient to have something done or to do it themselves. In Greece, even entire hospitals are built by the do-it- yourself method nowadays. Part of the economy is changing: typical con- sumers are becoming prosumers who co-design and co-produce as companies turn part of the value chain over to them. Entrepreneurs have dis- covered that a high degree of manufacturing pen- etration helps them to cater to clients’ wishes in a © Henrik Stromberg flexible way. They are more productive if prosum- ers help them. If there are new technologies like 3D printers, the relation between consumers and pro- ducers can shift even further – to one side as well as to the other side. It will change in any case. And Artists are DIY enthusiasts by definition. If most of them did not put their ideas into if, on top of that, resource protection and sustain- practice themselves, there would be no art. The Sewing Room by István Csásny, one of the highlights of this years’ dOCUMENTA (13), puts emphasis on the relationship between able development become the focus of DIY enthu- crafts and art. Sewing machines, ironing boards, neon tubes, cables and cotton reels siasts, … oh, they already have? Well then, have fun are hand-carved out of wood; the mannequins wear elegant blue overalls. The life- homebrewing! sized machines and tools conjure up the image of a disused factory; the end of a type of work that has disappeared. Ralf Bindel, Editor Translated by Christin Schell, Melanie Haschka Content 3 More Do-it-Yourself 6 Facts and Numbers 9 Word Cloud 10 From Hand Axes to 3D Printers 17 Standing on One’s Own Feet 24 Should you really DIY? About restrictions and creativity 30 DIY – Contours of a new living and economic culture 33 Subsistence Reloaded – For More Sustainability?! 41 Becoming a DIY enthusiast: how to turn an idea into a sustainable company 47 Brew it yourself! 55 The Aesthetics of Do-It-Yourself 59 Imprint 33 17 47 10 Thema 6 › Facts and numbers 348x106 Germany does not have just one, but 348 million screws loose. This 4321 is the result of an estimate made by Forsa on the behalf of Bosch. The 30 largest German DIY superstore 86 percent of the 1,000 people questioned are planning to tighten 300 Currently, Germans spend EUR 300 on chains have 4,321 locations; 15 years ago the screws. Source: www.presseportal.de/pm/74672 average for DIY projects in order to keep they only had 2,414. The 10 biggest dis- their households or houses in good con- counters have 15,898 stores in Germany. dition, from painting walls to complete Source: Dähne-Verlag, Baumarktzahlen roofing jobs. Hiring a professional would 2011 (Dähne publishing house, DIY super- cost approximately EUR 2,000. store numbers 2011) Source: GfK Living & Retail, BHB 2011 40%The power tool sector is especially concentrated in Baden-Wurttemberg and especially in the region around Stuttgart that is unique for Germany. Almost 6 40 percent of the world market are realized by compa- nies like AEG Electric Tools (Winnenden), Baier (As- perg), Bosch (Leinfelden, Murrhardt), Fein (Stuttgart, 24A simple glued laminated timber board and 6x10In 2003, Bosch was the first manufacturer 24 hours is all you need for the 24 Euro chair, to use the lithium-ion technology for Schwäbisch Gmünd), Festool (Wendlingen, Neidlingen), a high-quality, timeless piece of DIY-furni- battery-powered power tools. By 2007, six Flex (Steinheim), Metabo (Nürtingen). ture by the architect Le van Bo from the se- million cordless screwdrivers of the Ixo Source: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektrowerkzeug ries Hartz IV (German labour market reform model that uses this technology had been of 2005 that regulates and brings together sold. Therefore, this screwdriver is the unemployment and social security benefits) best-selling power tool worldwide since – producing instead of consuming. Source: 2004. www.hartzivmoebel.blogspot.de/ Source: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Robert_Bosch_GmbH Thema 7 › Facts and Numbers 2012 Right now, there are still 1,916 urban com- 2800 Expli.de, one of the largest DIY-community munity gardens, but by the end of 2012, there platforms, which was founded by DIY enthusi- are supposed to be 2012. Under the ambigu- asts in 2008, provides 2,800 instructions in ous title of Capital Growth, the City of Lon- 10 categories reaching from arts and crafts don helps to build new gardens in the city to learning and love. Source: www.expli.de 2126 that deliver foods. Over 40,000 people are The number of commercial breweries in the participating. USA has increased from 89 to 2,126 in the last Source: www.capitalgrowth.org 33 years. 100 years ago, there were already nearly 2,000 breweries. 1,300 breweries are currently being planned. The boom of the North American Craft-Beer-Breweries and the crea- tion of 100,000 new jobs can be attributed to the hobby brewers. 75 Source: www.brewersassociation.org Blogs and websites on the DIY exhibit website, ranging from 0.2 bausteln.de to wawerko.de, invite Work done by women in relation to people to rummage. work done by men amounts to 0.2 Source: www.diy-ausstellung.de when it comes to construction and trades, 2.3 when it comes to house- 8The companies with the highest manu- work and gardening, 2.1 when it facturing penetration have more than an comes to support and caring for other eight percent advantage in productivity household members, and 1.6 when it compared to the average of the industry. comes to unpaid work in general. Companies with a low manufacturing Source: Arbeitsteilung zwischen penetration are around four percent be- Männern und Frauen. Alltag in 40%German men spend 40 percent of their working time low this average. DIY and Insourcing can Deutschland, Forum der Bundesstatis- (including unpaid and paid work) for family and house- therefore mean an advantage in productiv- tik 2004 (Division of labour between work, whether there are children in the household or ity of more than 10 percentage points. men and women. Daily life in Germany. not. This share increases from 60 percent to 80 per- Source: Fraunhofer-ISI, PI.Mitteilung Nr. Forum of the Federal Statistics 2004) cent for women if they live together with children. 48, 2009 (Fraunhofer Institute for Systems Source: Alltag in Deutschland, Forum der Bun- and Innovation Research, PI-statement#48, desstatistik 2004 (Daily life in Germany, Forum of 2009) Federal Statistics 2004) Translated by Christin Schell, Melanie Haschka Thema 8 "thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, by inheritance of the resulting special development of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones as well, and by the ever-renewed employ- ment of these inherited improvements in new, more and more complicated operations, has the human hand attained the high degree of perfection that has enabled it to conjure into being the pictures of Raph- ael, the statues of Thorwaldsen, the music of Paganini. But the hand did not exist by itself. It was only one member of an entire, highly complex organism. And what benefited the hand, benefited also the whole body it served; and this in two ways." Friedrich Engels, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, in Dialectics of Nature, Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels - Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1963 Thema 9 Translated by Christin Schell, Melanie Haschka Thema 10 from Hand Axes to 3D Printers Do-it-yourself is a new, yet old trend. DIY stores, ATMs, ticket machines, Ikea, and Wikipedia are part of our everyday life. In a world in which businesses transfer part of their production to the customer, the latter develops more and more ideas for home production.