Dossier |

En torno a la silla
March 2016

Contact info
URL:
http://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com
E-mail:
entornoalasilla@gmail.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/entornoalasilla
Twitter:
@entornoalasilla

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En torno a la silla, Barcelona, March 2016
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Objectives
En torno a la silla
is a Spanish non-profit association operating from Barcelona.
In
En torno a la silla we co-create and fabricate collaboratively between people with diverse
knowledges and modes of functioning with the aim of transforming and intervening urban
environments, seeking to improve the conditions of accessibility, inclusiveness, and care in the
urban world. We need these ideas to permeate and to articulate our environments. Hence, we
design with and for diversity, seeking to create participatory design processes with the objective
of building truly enabling spaces: stimulating, joyful, and restless.
The name is a pun in Spanish that might be translated as revolving around the wheelchairs
environment, from en torno around/on, entorno surrounding and silla chair, in this
case wheelchair.
En torno a la silla
s objectives as a non-profit association are:
- Fostering the integration of functional diversity in the design of low cost technical aids, to
promote full accessibility and independent-living. This entails the promotion of user
collaboration in all steps of the fabrication process, and not only either in the initial or in
the testing/validation phases. That is, users are the main protagonists of the solution,
being involved in the conception, fabrication, and testing of the different prototypes,
choosing possible materials, formal and aesthetic aspects and informing of the basic
requirements the gadgets should fulfill.
- Promoting the production of open hardware and open-source designs, published using
different free/libre open licenses. For this the association seeks to foster the
experimentation and production of documentation of the process and outcome of the
design process in different formats: mostly video-documentation (in digital and
interactive formats) as well as tutorials and how-to manuals.
To meet these ends,
En torno a la silla
undertakes the following activities:
- hosting participatory events, workshops, and leisure activities, be it for the sake of
fabrication or learning;
- organizing, taking part, and collaborating in publications, conferences, debates,
workshops, public dissemination campaigns in the media and the press, and exhibitions;
- providing side-services to the prototype users;
- freely licensing the documentation produced in the fabrication process, making it
accessible.

Team

En torno a la silla
is composed of eight people: Marga Alonso Guevara; Alida Daz; Xavier
Duacastilla; Nuria Gmez; Arianna Mencaroni; Pepe Rovira; Toms Snchez Criado; and Rai
Vilatov. Our skills and activities are as diverse as our bodily functionings. In the collective there
are makers, filmmakers, architects, anthropologists, documentators, and independent-living
activists, four of them using wheelchairs.

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Main projects |
2012-2016

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1. En torno a la silla kit

December 2012-June 2014, Medialab-Prado Madrid.

In 2012 En torno a la silla submitted a project to Medialab-Prado Madrids

Functionings: Open design and social remix
call.
We aimed at designingandbuildingthreeobjectsofawheelchairkit:aportable
ramp, a folding table, and an armrestbriefcase. Our idea was not only that these
gadgets could make life easier and more comfortable to the users, but also that they
might enable different modes of relating to others and of interaction with the
environment.
One of the elements of the kit, the portable wheelchair ramp, displayed and
used to assault different spaces in different performances and explorations,
allowed the group to turn into a reflective and performative group, seeking not only
to report inaccessible spaces but also to displace the problem to the people in
charge of those spaces.
Different prototypes of the elements of the kit have been produced for
different users, allowing us to experiment not only with different materials, solutions,
and collaborative design methods, but also with open documentation formats.
Links (in Spanish)

(1) The original project:

https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/el-proyecto-original/

(2) A reflective blog post:

https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/de-que-va-en-torno-a-la-silla-octubre
-2013/
(3) Video of an assault with a voice-over reading L. Cohens Any system poem (with
English subtitles):
https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/cualquier-sistema-octubre-2013/
(4) Open documentation of the groups inventions:
https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/documentacion-abierta/

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2. Tinkering Spring event

June 2014, Can Batll, Barcelona.

The Tinkering Spring was an event organised by En torno a la silla to show, know
and share free, open and low cost design needs and solutions: that is, gadgets,
hacks, technical aids, technical appliances, smartphone apps, clothes, games, etc.
conceived from and built to promote the diversity of functionings.
The event consisted of 19 project presentations, a fair, and a final debate,
where resources, ideas and discoveries emerging from that day were shared. This
event joined a great diversity of actors: designers, craftspeople, users, artisans,
makers, hackers, illustrators, welders, etc.
As a result of that day the idea of an expanded community started to grow:
the Tinkering Network, mobilised by En torno a la silla, that would allow these
different actors to share knowledge, resources and spaces where collectives and
individual users might meet, be it to start auto-fabrication projects or to start a small
collaborative economy around the commissioning of objects.
Links (in Spanish)

(1) Event info:

https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/primaveracacharrera
2)Video-summary of the event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duki8vkBtr0&list=PLyqej6Dvgxgcs0MXFCxOxH7PTs
ZzKCi46
(3 Tinkering Networks blog:
https://redcacharrera.wordpress.com/

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3. Tinkerthon co-creation workshop

Preparation: July-September 2014. October 11 2014, Can Batll, Barcelona.

After the great success of the Tinkering Spring, and in order to foster the creation of the Tinkering
Network we cooperated with CoCreable (a co-creation studio) to host a co-creation workshop
that in the participatory preparation process populated by most of the presenters and attendees
to the Tinkering Spring was named Tinkerthon (
Cacharraton
), since it was to be a marathon of
tinkering of 8 hours where at least mock-ups or first prototypes of different gadgets or urban
interventions should be produced. After a long process of sharing and comments in CoCreables
digital platform, four challenges were chosen to be built during that day: (1) an autonomous
urine bag voiding system for wheelchair users; (2) a wheelchairs rain and sun protecting device;
(3) forms of accessible clothing; and (4) accessible spaces workshop seeking to think how the
Tinkering Network might be placed in Can Batlls facilities and what would be needed for that to
happen. These challenges were chosen because they had variegated levels of difficulty and
implied different material, organizational and design challenges, hence entailing an exploration on
what a Tinkering Network could be making together in the future. For that day we would work in
four groups of minimum three people each, with people in them having the following roles:
master builder (in charge of the continuity of the prototyping), host (in charge of explaining the
state of project to whoever might approach), and gossip (in charge of visually documenting the
design process with his or her smartphone). The day proved to be a very nice experience with 20
people working in groups to develop and showcase the prototypes. However, in the following
months and due to the precariousness of many of the makers there present, most of these
prototypes were discontinued, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to emplace the Tinkering
Network in Can Batlls workshops. This failure proved very interesting to reflect more accurately
on the infrastructural needs that such a network might entail.

Links (in Spanish)

(1) Event info:

https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/cacharraton/
(2) Video-summary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7SavhPYAq8
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4. Digital fabrication prototypes

From July 2015. Ateneu de Fabricaci de Les Corts, Barcelona

After the productive failure of the Tinkering Network we started searching for appropriate means
to make such a network happen. Hence, in 2015 we started learning and working on new
prototypes within one of the nodes of Barcelonas brand new Network of Digital Fabrication
Athenaeums, property of Barcelonas municipality. These spaces are being experimentally
developed as publicly accessible district- or neighbourhood-related fablabs, focusing on specific
themes or topics but interconnected between them. Conceived as a public equipment they have
as main aims: empowering citizens through the use of digital fabrication technologies; and
making available and open all the different projects there generated fostering practices of social
return in the use of these equipments. With the help and technical aid of the professionals
managing the node we have worked in (Les Corts), we started learning digital fabrication
technologies (3D printers, laser cutters, modelling software, etc.). After this, several prototypes
have been produced: for instance, Nurias foldable table, or a rampometer, a tool with a laser
pointer used to measure and to visualise the length needed by a ramp, making available to chose
between different degrees of inclination. The rampometer is the first piece of a new urban
accessibility kit we would like to build, consisting of a removable and portable plywood
wheelchair ramp made out of detachable parts, allowing different degrees of inclination. Beyond
this, we plan to continue developing the foldable 3D printed table this time for Laura, a potential
new member, and we have started working on an accessible harness to join Ismael in his
mountain strolls.

Links (in Spanish)

(1) Presentation of the first outcomes in a blog post, mostly Nurias new foldable table:
https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/formacion-en-fabricacion-digital-en-el
-ateneu-de-fabricacio-les-corts-julio-2015-enero-2016/
(2) The rampometer:
https://entornoalasilla.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/rampometro/

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5. Webdoc project Vidas fuera de catlogo

In the making since May 2013. Madrid & Barcelona

There is a need to think of more empowering ways of designing gadgets and objects for
wheelchair users to the existing rehabilitative and medical corporate appliances, distributed in a
closed dispensary or catalogue by the public administrations. These objects turn users into
passive subjects. Thus, we need to incorporate the knowledge and the experiences of the people
who use those gadgets to live independently in a diverse world. This aim entails a transformation
in the assigned roles of people experts and end users and objects technical aids, usually
embodying the expertise of the former over the experiences of the latter. In En torno a la silla we
design and fabricate collaboratively: there are no professionals separated from users; there is not
an isolated body we need to rehabilitate, or pathologies to cure. Furthermore, we do not build
perfectly finished objects. Instead, we build ceaselessly according to need and desire seeking to
go out of the catalogue.
However, we have sometimes found very difficult to explain the whys and hows of such
process. Hence, as part of our exploration of open-source documentation formats
Vidas fuera de
catlogo (Lives out of the catalogue) is a webdoc project seeking to document exploring
different digital video, multimedia, and interactive hypermedia visualisation formats the
collectives and other similar fabrication processes. For this, footage of different activities of the
group and of more than 20 interviews to relevant actors in the field of low cost open design for
independent-living in Spain has been gathered. After this we started trying out different
interactive displays. The project is still a work in progress. A first beta and local prototype has
been shown at Medialab-Prado Madrids Objects in Common exhibition from October 2015 to
March 2016.

Links (in Spanish)

(1) Presentation of the project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLSlxuNp230

(2) Objects in Common exhibition (available in English):

http://medialab-prado.es/article/objetos-comunes

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