The Humblefactory (for Alchematter.org)

Humblefactory.com is a design laboratory that develops tools, materials, manufacturing techniques, and design frameworks for small-scale designers to create more useful, capable products using the local resources available to them. Alchematter is a platform being developed by The Humblefactory which allows designers around the world to share and remix designs for open source objects.

Alchematter allows designers from around the world to tap into the global collective expertise and remix or adapt these designs to fit their own local contect. Alchematter offers a simple shared platform for sharing open designs. By encouraging a massive, decentralized collection of designers to share their own ideas and create new works based on others, Alchematter encourages each designer to create something powerful that reflects the needs and desires of their consumers. By combining these designers with today’s increasingly better-informed end users, Alchematter will inspire secondary effects, such as reduced environmental impact (since local production means local pollution), better market resilience (since decentralized manufacturing spreads the burden of a downturn), and more nimble innovation (since Alchematter has thousands of designers and thousands of researchers on the ground). Alchematter gives small makers the power to take back control of the global market, one community at a time.