Espacio Open
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
Espacio Open is an emerging cultures accelerator at the intersection between art, technology and social issues. Member of the Fab Lab network with a decade of grassroots activities and bottom-up public-private-people partnerships in the Zorrotzaurre island in Bilbao, Spain, this non-profit has transformed the Artiach old cookie factory into a space that mixes open source technologies, circular economy, experimental young migrant programs with local manufacturing and heritage preservation.
Geographical Scope
Project Region
Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Description of the project
Summary
Espacio Open is an accelerator of emerging cultures working on social and creative projects based in the Artiach old cookie Factory in Bilbao. The project is a grassroots proof of concept that tries to reformulate the relationship between citizens and industrial heritage, transforming abandoned warehouses with frugal innovation approaches into places of opportunity that transform untapped civic potential into new spaces for emerging cultures to flourish.
The Artiach old cookie factory is an emblematic building located in the island of Zorrotzaurre, Bilbao, the last post-industrial area of the city, masterplanned by architect Zaha Hadid . Since 2011, Espacio Open has converted abandoned spaces, paying rent to its owners, into meeting points for new to socio-cultural proposals, new ethics and aesthetics that reached up to110,000 people in 2019 (pre-covid numbers). Activities by Espacio Open include the Open Your Ganbara market that began in 2009 before moving into the cookie factory, the open source technologies workshop Fab Lab Bilbao or the festival of creative technologies Maker Faire Bilbao. The project also fosters a residency for artists, makers and young migrants that learn values in diversity and inclusion while getting their working permits and job opportunities in industrial and creative industries (CCI) in the cookie factory ecosystem.
Espacio Open mediated between property owners and CCI projects that needed affordable space to put transform the ruins of post-industrial society into a platform for better futures. In total there are more than 35 projects with more than 150 direct jobs that mix creative industries, local manufacturing and urban culture coexisting and collaborating to keep the building alive and formulate a new approach to heritage preservation in southern Europe, where traditional strategies in urban regeneration do not take in account culture as a strategic aspect in placemaking and citizen participation.
Key objectives for sustainability
Open Your Ganbara, our first project, allowed for 100 tons of goods per year to be put back in circulation trough civic participation.
More details on this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6WOS2HCaWk.
Our activity, on one side, reverted the spiral of decay that would have ended eventually in the irreversible deterioration of the building, since there's a direct relationship between occupation and preservation. On the other side, being present in the building allowed to retrieve many elements from being stolen and dismantled.
Fab Lab Bilbao, our open source technologies workshop, gives early access to avant-garde technologies to innovate in product, process and service that years ago were only available for big players such as companies, governments and universities. The Fab Lab Network, coordinated by the MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, is the most advanced practitioner of the emerging concept of Distributed Design. Fab Lab Bilbao has helped makers, designers and engineers make relevant contributions in fields such as ceramics 3d printing with the Jetclay project. More information in this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUJJtdFGyrc
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The combination of past, present and future is one of the core strenghts of the project. By transforming the old cookie factory warehouses with low-cost and open source community approaches, Espacio Open has contributed to an ethic and aesthetic that reconfigures the ruins of post-industrial society into platforms for better futures that can test new possible uses for urban spaces that could not be planified beforehand. The low-cost-by-necessity approach to space refurbishing takes advantage of an extraordinary building such as the old cookie factory finding the right balance between novelty and familiarity, which is key for any good design to provide good quality solutions while keeping an emotional bond with the place's heritage. A search for the term "Espacio Open" in google images or Instagram can give different perspectives of images from both Espacio Open's team but also from third parts and regular citizens.
"Industrial buildings are our contemporary cathedrals, these inmense spaces connect deeply with all types of persons, it's a post-industrial sense of belonging to something gone", claims Nerea Díaz, director and co-founder of Espacio Open in the year 2009. "When we started back then, no one would visit the area besides workers and neighbors. After the first two years, and thanks to the word-to-mouth, we started gaining a traction we never thought was possible and then hundreds of regular citizens with their families would show up every Sunday. That flow of visitors also allowed for the local shops to stay open during the crisis at the beginning of the past decade. People felt at home in the cookie factory. They would tell you stories about when they would come as a child to buy the broken cookies by the kilo, or how their aunt was part of the hundreds of women who would come to Bilbao to become a "galletera", a cookie maker. This place is special in the heart of the city and we're proud to have contributed to its preservation for the next generations".
Key objectives for inclusion
Espacio Open started working with young people at risk of exclusion in the year 2016 with the support of Orange Foundation in the Breakers project. After assessing that the progress of the participants was usually stopped due to the lack of stability in the entourage of these young migrant kids, the project complemented the training with its own resources to work with the same group of 12 persons and provide them with a home, basic needs and legal and emotional support in coordination with the third sector organisation that was in charge of their support. 5 of the 12 used our residence as a home for periods that went from 3 months up to 3 years. Two of them became official members of the non-profit and, after getting their working permits, are fully integrated in the Espacio Open staff. The cultural and creative industries context allow also to educate young people from other cultural contexts in values such as diversity and minority rights. This part of the Espacio Open programme has been developed with no public funding involved, as a proof of concept of new ways to support the transition of young migrants by giving them an material and affective entourage that helps them tackle the gaps that need to be filled so that they can become active and contributing citizens.
On another aspect, Fab Lab Bilbao allows for an inclusive transfer of technological-based knowledge, tools and expertise by using open source approaches and methodologies that can be used by all types of persons and organisations, including non-specialised audiences. Before Covid-19 nearly 400 people were trained per year in different digital fabrication technologies such as 3d printing, lasercutting or open source electronics with Arduino and Raspberry Pi. The creatives technology festival Maker Faire Bilbao also reached more than 10.000 people per year. The latest additions are an Open Aroma Lab for scent and perfume design and a Cinema and Artificial Intelligence corner, open to the public.
Results in relation to category
Reversing the spiral of decay in which the building was immersed before Espacio Open's arrival transformed the cookie factory into a factor of stability of the neighborhood in the always crucial moment between the approval of a masterplan and its actual implementation
The Building is now an essential part of the emotional memory of the city. It is the most visited place in the island of Zorrotzaurre, fosters diverse arts, crafts and local manufacturing activities collaborating in a neigbourhood-cluster effect.
Social Media accounts have nearly 30.000 followers (35.000 including Maker Faire Bilbao's accounts). The project has a 4.2 stars review on Google places with more than 950 reviews as of 07/03/2022.
Espacio Open's activity has been highlighted in local and national media, accesible in the following link: https://espacioopen.com/medios/
On the qualitative aspect, bellow are some quotes of diverse stakeholders that give an overview of the impact achieved:
- "Espacio Open is the place where my artistic career started". Vanessa Lorenzo, artist and biohacker.
- "The role of Espacio Open as a bridge to bring new activities to the factory has allowed to keep the building afloat. We would have probably closed by now if it wasn't for the new type of creative neighboors that arrived after they opened the door to new uses". Sabina Masan, president of the owners community of the building.
- "They took me over and gave me the family I needed to find my place in Europe". Mohamed Ben Abbou, young migrant who participated in the Breakers program and now is a Espacio Open staff member, coordinador of the restaurant at Jardín Secreto.
-" Espacio Open organised the best bootcamp I have ever attended. For two weeks we learned how to build a giant 3d printer and I was able to continue developing my passive humidifier project there. It was great! The teacher taught us many types of extruders!". Tony Gutierrez, designer.
How Citizens benefit
Espacio Open is a concrete example of what could happen when unused spaces can be put back into circulation with frugal innovation and temporary use approaches, allowing for untapped civic potential to create new physical spaces for new cultures, in art, sports or social innovation, that could not be possible or financially sustainable in standardised environments, where intensive capital investments leave out of the equation many citizen projects that can become motors of change in an urban transformation process.
After our projects settlement, we created a mediation mechanism between warehouse owners and emerging culture projects that needed a place to establish themselves. This mechanism allowed for the new activities to arrive into the building from cultural and creative industries. In the context of EU-funded project T-factor, where one of the pilots around best practices on temporary use is being developed in the Zorrotzaurre island, the following summary videoclip was made, showing the participation of some of the projects Espacio Open helped land and stay in the island: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A1bWmep2PQ.
In the case of Circular Economy market Open Your Ganbara, more than 2.000 citizens, families and non-profit organisations were initiated to the 3R culture by selling what they don't need to an audience of 1.500 visitors each Sunday.
The preservation of the old cookie factory has allowed to create/or preserve more than 150 jobs between cultural and creative industries and local manufacturing traditional workshops.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Normal procedure would be to let building continue its spiral of decay until a the minimun activity soil was traspassed and thus closed and abandonned for decades that can go in between the date of approval of the masterplan and its actual implementation in the area. The cookie factory was scheduled to be in Zone 2, later on in the process, so it is very likely that the abandoned building would have become a source of instabilities in the neighbourhood and many of its heritage elements would have been irreversibly damaged.
Instead of this, it has become one of the symbols of the Zorrotzaurre transformation by allowing for an experimental public-private-people partnership.
Public because, when in office, the then mayor of Bilbao, Ibon Areso, replied positively to Espacio Open's proposal to change the Zorrotzaurre special urban plan to include already existing uses and open up the door to new uses such as sports equipment, which facilitated the arrival of rockclimbing boulder project Piugaz Bilbao.
Private because most of the kickstarting capital and resources were made by the grassroots' own resources, demonstrating that in non-standardised contexts it is likely to transform spaces without heavy capital investments with creative solutions for temporary use of abandoned facilities.
People because civic action was the main engine of transformation of the Zorrotzaurre island in the last decade. As stated in one of the Reports of the T-factor project on collaborative governance models for the island, available here, "Zorrotzaurre is special because of its history of temporary uses and the relevant role these take in the regeneration process". The island's progress demonstrates that civic action, by allowing and facilitating the creation of new communities around physical spaces for emerging cultures, can become one of the motors of urban transformation.
Learning transferred to other parties
The project T-factor has included Zorrotzaurre as one of its pilots. So transfer of knowledge and expertise is guaranteed thanks to the support of the Horizon 2020 funding. In parallel, the project is tackling pending challenges such as collaborative governance models, need for new regulatory frameworks for temporary use and impact assesment that allow for a rigourous evaluation of tangible and intangible outcomes.
A summary of the situation in the Zorrotzaurre can be found in the following report: https://www.t-factor.eu/d2-2-t-factor-pilots-regeneration-projects-masterplans-temporary-uses/
Regarding the methodology, T-factor's Theory of Change summarises the approach that will create new sources of tools, methods and insights for other cities in the EU and beyond: https://www.t-factor.eu/d7-1-theory-of-change/
