Attachment, Durability and the Environmental Impact of Digital DIY

Abstract

The recent popularization of amateur design practices and digital fabrication tools has been accompanied by a vast discourse announcing the emergence of a new production and consumption paradigm. This new participatory model has been assigned, among other benefits, environmental advantages over more traditional ways of manufacture and trade. However, most of these expectations are based on the possible rather than the actual usage of digital tools. This article questions the assumption that digital DIY is substituting mass production with a more sustainable model and presents a different panorama of the implications of digital DIY based on an ethnographic study of the FabLab Amsterdam users.