Innovator: Romain di Vozzo - https://www.linkedin.com/in/romaindivozzo/
Organisation: FABLAB UNIVERSITÉ PARIS-SACLAY, Gif-sur-Yvette
Description of the practice:
"The Art of Fabricating Tangible Interfaces" is an annual course I give to master students at Fablab Université Paris-Saclay. This course is meant to offer immersive "hands-on" practices in computer-aided design and digital fabrication in a fablab setup. The course is designed to empower our students through the use of digital technologies, to help them develop autonomous practices, and to express their creativity.
The course is divided into 7 classes of 3h and runs over 7 weeks of formal class-time. Each week, students have to document everything they do to complete their assignment and to post their weekly-accomplishments on their personal website/portfolio. The course ends with a public exhibition where each student shows his/her final project. What is not documented on the students online portfolio is not taken into account for gradings. Students receive the grading-system at the beginning of the course.
Since the very first class, students have to start using the machines - mainly Laser-cutters and 3D printers - and they also have to start drawing/designing patterns for their final projects exhibition on a CAD design software.
For this course I give many degrees of cultural freedom to the students so that they can express their creativity. Also, since Fablab UPSaclay is a third-place and a co-working space dedicated to hardware, it is open all week-long so the students can comeback at anytime during the week to complete their assignment on the machines (between 10AM and 8PM). And doing so, they can also immerge themselves into our community-space culture, sharing ideas and knowledge with other members of our community (makers, designers, entrepreneurs, hackers, etc).
The frame of the course is based on technical and design constraints. The tangible interfaces I am asking the students to design and make have to be flat and modular patterns that interlock seamlessly between each others to shape a flexible and foldable surface that is big enough to cover 1sm.
The website of the course : https://fablab_upsaclay.gitlab.io/courses/artfabti/
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