Fast forward to 2023, when I watched my 3D printer work on the first part of the machine I am going to design in this Master, it evoked a similar feeling: The excitement of being able to make (almost) anything.(1) 3D printers nowadays can print more than just useful or playful objects.

Industrial 3D printers are capable of printing parts of houses or even complete housings.(2) Commercial mid-level 3D printers have found their way into design studios for new digital fabrication and iterative design processes, and cheaper commercial 3D printers, available for less than 100€, allow individuals to realize ideas whenever and wherever their printer is with a few clicks.

Through interacting with 3D printers, I discovered a new and digitalized world of Do-It-Yourself, which is commonly known as the Maker Culture or Maker Scene.(3) While mass-production has created a consumer culture, the Maker Scene enforces a DIY culture.(4) This can be recognized by the will to repair and create something instead of buying, and the progressive growth in Fablabs: Around 1750 Fablabs are established in over 100 countries around the globe, opening their doors to individuals (“fabbers, […] maker[s], hacker[s], DIY, amateur in digital fabrication”(5)) who want to learn about digital fabrication technologies and prototype their ideas with the tools and community-knowledge provided.

Before I even knew about the relation of Open-Source and Textile and Material Design, my context was the one of a design student, who was using simple commercial tools, like Crochet Hooks, Circular Sock Knitting Machines or chunky Knitting Boards, and also the art
academy’s workshops. A feeling of frustration emerged during and still after the COVID-17 lockdowns, when I faced missing accessibility to certain common textile machines and tools, like a spinning wheel or machine, as I was interested in the process of yarn construction. However, I have a skill of turning frustration into motivation, and so I felt a little flame burning inside of me, eager to grow.

The summer of 2020 changed everything. For the first time, I had the opportunity to work with an industrial machine at the Saxon Textile Research Institute (STFI) during the semester project “Scaling Fiber: Experimental Yarns”. I learned about possibilities and boundaries of industrial machinery and found myself fascinated by this old, but certainly fit for the contemporary, of making yarns for the architectural context. My research and further details of the project, an introduction to Architectural Yarns (6) and specifically my output “Earth Yarn”, can be found in my Living Textiles Research.

From 2022, my internship and later work at Studio HILO (HILO Textiles) allowed me to learn how open-source technologies and textile design intersect. The studio primarily worked with the open-source HILO spinning machine, offering services from material and machine prototyping
to building and selling the spinning machine. During my time working at the studio I was involved in every task and learned about open-source machine building. The conversation about how HILO started and the perks and struggles of building an open-source machine can be found as an interview with Sara Diaz Rodriguez in my Master Thesis.

Finally, motivation behind this project can be explained with Bruno Latour’s concept of the Terrestrial in Down to Earth, and also Donna Haraway’s worlding (7) is of equal importance. We
(the beings on this Earth) have been exposed to a world of modernization and globalization and yet the Local, to be attached to land, to feel safe in times of crisis, becomes more and more
attractive. I am going to link Latour’s Terrestrial, and the open-source movement in this thesis, for it is the intention to take from pre-industrial ways of working – in communities, sharing
resources, using local materials, “returning to the soil” – without fearing the Modern, too.

And this introduction should finish with my favorite quote from Down To Earth, Latour’s answer to the question, “[h]ow can the feeling of being protected be provided without an immediate return to identity and the defense of borders?” By “attaching oneself to the soil on the one hand, becoming attached to the world on the other”.(8)