Makers Lab: Making as Research

Are you curious, creative, and critical?

Join us for a semester of transdisciplinary making, experiments, hacking, tinkering, digital fabrication, and electronics. This semester course offered at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences provides an intense training in digital fabrication (tools and techniques like laser cutting, 3D printing, new materials, and electronics), and an introduction into tinkering and making-as-research.

In a world where disposable products dominate, it's time to rethink the value of making and the way we make things. With a DIY and open-source approach, this international minor challenges you to think critically about the impact of your creations on the environment and to explore alternative, more sustainable ways of making things. We aim to empower you to become a critical maker and tinkerer. In this minor, the act of making and tinkering is a way to research, discover and push boundaries. 

The Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences’ Makers Lab is your playground this semester. The first half of the minor focusses on experiments and tinkering. We’ll explore the wonderful world of DIY critical making and digital fabrication. This second half of this minor program offers a unique opportunity to apply what you learned and develop your own research project. You’ll rediscover the potential of traditional materials and techniques, and you learn how to use them in the context of high-tech crafts and sustainable fabrication. 

Join us in the minor Makers Lab and discover the art of making in the 21st century. Unleash your creativity and make a positive impact on the world!

Who are we looking for?

This minor welcomes students with an open, curious, and analytical attitude, coming from a fashion, design, art, ICT, or engineering background, who have demonstrable experience with 2 or more of the following at intermediate level: 3D modelling, electronics, 2D design (vector drawing), programming skills, garment construction, molding & casting, mechanical engineering/machine building. As the entire program is taught in English, participants are required to speak, read, and write English on a B2 level.

What do you gain?

At the end of this minor, you have developed yourself as critical maker. You bring valuable hands-on knowledge and skills to any professional environment: you can work with conceptual frameworks to initiate question-driven design processes with an awareness of the politics, cultures, and histories of made objects. This allows you to develop an ethical contemporary maker practice and share your expertise in a way that allows others to build on and learn from your work. 

• Digital Craftsmanship: The ability to safely and creatively use lab equipment and tools to design and fabricate 2D and 3D objects and textures, make functional molds, create and program sensors and actuators, following recipes to recreate and modify biopolymers and pigments.  
• Material Research & Documentation: The ability to analyze the properties of materials and their relationship to tools and production processes used in order to identify areas for further question-led material exploration. Knowing how, when and what to reference and document for others to reproduce, replicate, and continue building on your work. 
• Argumentation & Storytelling: The ability to develop stimulating scenarios and use effective (material) storytelling techniques to build an argument for the future relevance, urgency, and creative potential of their materials research, presented as part of an exhibition. 
• Transdisciplinary practitioner: The ability to collaborate transdisciplinary. Being able to use thinking and methods of a discipline other than their own. To use each other's medium, technique, and skill. The process of discovery, development and experimentation is more important than the result.

More information

For more information or questions, please contact the International Office CMD international-cmd@hva.nl or the coordinator of the programme: Micky van Zeijl m.va.n.zeijl@hva.nl or Sam Edens s.edens@hva.nl .

• www.minormakerslab.nl(opens in new window)

Want to apply?