La Fraise - Faubourg 132
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
La Fraise is born of our desire to question numerical-control machines potentialities in manufacturing and reuse.
From 2016, we imagine and carry out this mobile numerical design and manufacturing studio.
It allows us to question the ways to produce, reuse and self-produce.
Thanks to La Fraise, we design collective actions and projects in cultural, social, educational facilities and encourage the public to question their environment by doing.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
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Description of the project
Summary
La Fraise is at the heart of a research project that we have been developing since 2013 on revalorisation. This project is a concrete expression of our commitment to the reappropriation of objects and repair. It allows us to develop our research into alternative solutions to the production of wastes. It is a trailer type structure, supporting a micro-chain of reasoned and local production. It is equipped with a computer-assisted woodworking machine (digital milling machine) and hand tools for woodworking.
We have designed La Fraise to :
- Make the design and manufacture of the objects that surround us accessible to all and allow everyone to take ownership of their environment.
To do this, we imagine collective projects to offer the public the opportunity to be an active participant, from the design to the manufacture of an object, space or layout. We move around the whole of the Hauts de France region. The workshops are free and suitable for all publics and are intergenerational. We work within different structures ( communities, companies, schools, associations, etc...).
- To create a local and responsible alternative to traditional manufacturing processes and to initiate partnership networks (suppliers, designers, producers, distributors) in a short supply chain. We design and produce furniture adapted to the needs of our partners, for temporary events or permanent installations. We also manufacture a range of objects, Zéro Chute, in our studio which we distribute exclusively locally.
- To make a digital technology that was previously reserved for industry accessible to the general public. La Fraise is an educational tool for raising awareness of sustainable development, local production and digital tools, its mobility allows it to reach as many people as possible. The demonstrations initiate concrete exchanges around these issues with the public.
Key objectives for sustainability
In 2013, we initiated the Recyclab laboratory for experimentation and creation, in which we develop projects related to the notions of remanufacturing. We invest repair as a medium for experimentation and question the potential offered by CNC machines in the field of object revalorisation.
As a result of the research carried out, we are designing transmission protocols and initiating collective actions to invite the public to experiment with repair using a numerically controlled milling machine, La Fraise project was born. The public-oriented actions we carry out allow us to raise awareness of sustainable development concepts through practice.
Moreover, since the creation of the association, we have defended a contextual, local and responsible approach to the design and manufacture of objects. Born from our desire to experiment with a short recycling circuit, we imagined the Zéro Chute range. This series of objects is designed to generate as less offcuts as possible and is made in our studio in Armentières. Our wish is to create partnerships with local structures (museums, companies, recycling centres, etc.) in order to reuse panels of decommissioned or damaged wood, or from the ends of exhibitions. Since 2018, two series of the range have been produced and distributed locally, they have been cut from wood coming from the dismantling of an exhibition for the first and a temporary art installation for the second and resulted in the reuse of about 45 m2 of wood panels.
We wanted to make our digital machine tool mobile as well in order to be able to produce furniture or micro-architecture directly at the place where we sourced the recycled wood panels or in the context of other projects, directly on the site concerned in the public presence. The choice of recycled materials and the mobility of La Fraise allow us to minimise the environmental impact of transport in the life of manufactured objects, but also to revalue a large amount of waste.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
We are very keen to accompany the public from the conception to the fabrication of a project. In order to make the public aware of digital fabrication in a very short time, we have imagined different forms of transmission. In the RecycLab workshops, we help participants to design and draw a repair for an object destined for the dumpster. In another workshop format, after defining uses, each participant imagines an object according to a repertoire of shapes. Collectively, we think about the interlocking of the parts to generate as little waste as possible during the cutting process. Then each participant prepares, shapes, sands and assembles his or her different parts to leave with the object. This type of project can also take longer forms during which we design objects with the public that are adapted to the context of the intervention. In 2017, we are also initiating the Zero Chute project. We are questioning the ways of revaluing and self-producing by designing and producing a range of furniture in which the shape and aesthetics are based on a bias: to valorise a maximum of material by generating the fewest possible offcuts. Whether it is through the tools made available to the public for the creation of objects in workshops or in the design of the Zéro Chute range, it is important to us to bring the added value of our profession of designer to the aesthetics of the objects produced. We want participants or buyers to be able to enjoy an object designed and thought out by a designer. We would like to offer the public the opportunity to experience a design methodology. This experience takes place in the conception of a project and in a reflection on its uses in relation to its environment and its ways of living. But also in the formalization of objects which is facilitated. In fact, we guide the public through pre-established forms that are subject to modification in order to facilitate the transmission of our know-how while not overlooking the aesthetic dimension.
Key objectives for inclusion
We want our projects to be vectors of conviviality, instigators of meetings and exchanges. Each of them is nourished by the partnerships we activate, by the intervention of the public that we integrate at each stage of creation: from conception to production.
We act to do it together, taking into account the skills and know-how of each person, highlighting the capacity of each one to question and modify their environment. We defend the diffusion and access to culture, in particular through the conception of ways of transmitting that favour access to artistic practices. This is one of the reasons why we wanted a mobile digital design and production workshop, in order to get as near as possible to the public, especially those who are farthest from culture.
We want to enable the public to look at their surroundings differently and to transform them (the neighbourhood, leisure activities, the way of living together, making things, etc.). The Ateliers La Fraise, the RecycLab laboratory and the Zero Chute range enable the public to question the ways in which things are made, consumed and repaired. Through simple, educational actions, we invite the public to become active in their environment and to re-examine their relationship with objects. We constantly try to promote social links by bringing together different groups of people to create projects for the area they share (social, medico-social, school, etc.). In particular, we have carried out a project in a day care centre for mentally handicapped people and in a motor education institute with a group of children. During these collective work sessions, we accompanied the public in identifying the problems and/or needs of their structure (a side table, a tea towel holder or exhibition furniture for the children's work, etc.). Then, using design tools that we devised, in particular a repertoire of shapes, the participants imagined objects. We accompanied them them in the making and realisation of their project.
Results in relation to category
Since the prototype of La Fraise entered the experimental phase, we have made several one-off sales of our range of Zéro Chute objects, thus enabling us to test a local recycling scheme. The recovered wood panels were cut and shaped in our workshop in the north of France. The objects sold were distributed within a very limited area and without postal deliveries in order to reduce the impact of transport. This production in reasonable quantities allowed us to revalue several wooden panels. These exceptional sales also allowed us to communicate about the association's project and the values it defends, while trying to raise public awareness of this type of approach.
Several projects were also carried out thanks to La Fraise, reconciling the desire of our partners to work with recycled materials. In particular, we designed and built a model-tool for the design of a scenography for the team and the public of the Institute for Photography in Lille. This tool was made thanks to La Fraise from forex panels taken from the dismantling of the structure's signage.
Within the framework of the transmission project, we have so far counted a hundred direct beneficiaries and carried out five actions aimed at the public. La Fraise is involved in the manufacture of other projects of the association, some tests, models or finished projects are thus cut and manufactured thanks to digital cutting, most often in recycled materials. So far, a dozen projects have been made using our mobile digital design and manufacturing tool.
How Citizens benefit
Through our transmission actions, we try to accompany an awareness and empowerment of the individual. We conceive ways of transmitting adapted to the public and to the contexts of intervention. We imagine tools such as La Fraise in order to allow the public to reappropriate and question their immediate environment through practice.
This is how the La Fraise project started, with the desire to work with the public and to involve them as much as possible in the process of creating and making a project. We want to make the public as active as possible during our interventions.
Manufacturing requires skills or time that we don't necessarily have, however, numerically controlled machines, and particularly the digital milling machine, offer us a rapid response to this problem. This allows us to manufacture more quickly but also to involve the participants to the end. With this in mind, we decided to make La Fraise mobile so as not to exclude people who could not travel and thus reach as many people as possible.
Citizens and civil society were therefore a starting point in the imagination and design of La Fraise and the resulting projects, which are designed for the public in order to adapt to the maximum number of people and to make the exercise of creating a design project as accessible as possible.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Our La Fraise project is a global research and development project linking sustainable development and social innovation.
La Fraise project is a testament to interdependent social and technical innovation.
The mobility of the digital manufacturing tool is a fundamental principle and constitutes the means of the social ambition that we aim to achieve through this project.
CNCs have been around for many years, but this technology is often reserved only for the world of industry.
Combining the strengths and skills of each member of the Faubourg 132 collective, several years of design, research and development and manufacturing were necessary to develop this functional prototype.
Thanks to La Fraise, since October 2020, we have been going out to meet the public, in rural, urban or suburban areas. Each collective action with the public is imagined with local structures and are all nourished by our desire to accompany the public in the development of its power to act. This is where the social innovation of our project is based.
It is about initiating actions of cultural democracy (and not cultural democratisation). In the context of our actions, the public is an active participant, never a consumer. They initiate the idea of their own object, according to their needs, problems or desires. Accompanied by the members of the collective, they draw the shapes, shape and assemble the pieces that make it up. The work of the hand and the concretisation of an idea are essential in the development of self-confidence.
By offering the public the opportunity to be an active participant in their environment, to experience the design and manufacture of objects, and to understand the issues involved in recycling, we hope to support a change in the way we live in the world, one that is more conscious, engaging and committed.
Learning transferred to other parties
The context of intervention is fundamental in the construction of our projects, for this reason we have set up a reproducible and adaptable methodology, which takes into account the potential local partners, the materials available, the time and the public concerned:
1/ Each project starts with a context analysis of the intervention:
- identification of potential partners
- sourcing of recycled materials
- the problems relating to the site
2/ In the case of
a desire to involve the public in the design and manufacture over a long period:
- Raising awareness of our approach among the public
- Analysis of the context with the participants
- Identification of problems and needs
a desire to involve the public in the design and manufacture over a short period:
- Raising awareness of our approach with the public
- Choice of a problem, an individual use to be solved
a project without public involvement:
- Artistic and technical design of the objects according to the problems identified and the secondary raw materials sourced.
3/ In the case of
a desire to involve the public in the design and manufacture over a long or short period
- Design and use of tools to facilitate the formalisation of objects (models, repertoire of forms, etc.)
a project without public involvement
- Manufacturing in our workshop in Armentières
4/ In the case of
a desire to involve the public in the design and manufacture over a long period:
- Technical design, production of machining plans without the public
a desire to involve the public in the design and manufacture over a short period of time:
- Adaptation of the pre-designed shapes to the project, preparation of the machining plans with the public
a project without public involvement:
- Implementation, activation or local distribution
5/ In the case of
a desire to involve the public in the design and manufacture over a long or short period:
- Manufacturing, shaping and activation with the public
