REFLOW – Co-creating circular and regenerative resource flows in cities

How can citizens, policy-makers and businesses co-design circular and regenerative cities? Rapid urbanization and the simultaneous unsustainable consumption of resources accentuate the need to develop a new urban metabolic system. REFLOW is an EU H2020 funded project, from 2019 to 2022, that seeks to understand and transform urban material flows and to co-create and test ...

Assessing the democratization, innovation and sustainability potential of “design global, manufacture local”

Summary: The goal of this multiphase, pilot-driven project is to explore the contours of an emerging mode of production that builds on the confluence of the digital commons of knowledge, software, and design with local manufacturing technologies (e.g. from 3D printing and CNC machines to low-tech tools and crafts).  This convergence could play a key role in ...

Transvestment: Value and cooperation in the digital commons economy

Transvestment describes the transfer of value from capitalism to the commons. Thus transvestment strategies aim to help commoners become financially and socially sustainable and autonomous. This project includes: a research article/case study on the blockchain-based start-up, Backfeed (published); a research article/case study on the Enspiral Network (published); a chapter in T. Scholz’s and N. Schneider’s collective book on ...

Wikiart: Commoning artistic expression

This project tries to answer whether a theatrical play or a piece of music, inspired by the social design of Wikipedia, could be developed as a digital commons. Building on two old relevant pilots of the P2P Lab community, we will further explore what lessons can be drawn from commons-based peer production with regards to art (in ...

Deschooling: Commons-based peer production and education

This project sets out to investigate how commons-based peer production could change our educational system. So far, it includes a two-phase pilot project that explores the educational and communicational potential of open source 3D printing (papers here and here). Coordinator: Alekos Pantazis.

Open-source technology in agricultural production

Summary: This project attempts to explore the open source technology (with a focus on hardware) for agriculture emerging from a mode of production different from the capitalist one, that of commons-based peer production. There are indeed several existing open source projects in relation to the primary sector of the economy, and particularly agriculture. This project ...

Think global, print local

Summary: This article discusses an intrinsic case study which demonstrates the convergence of decentralized online and offline ways of sharing knowledge. We describe a new techno-economic form of value creation and distribution in relation to the knowledge commons and the publishing industry. Moreover, the dynamics and challenges of an emerging commons-based copyright license, named Peer ...

The emergence of urban makerspaces

Full title: “Making (in) the smart city: The emergence of makerspaces”, co-authored by Vasilis Niaros, Vasilis Kostakis & Wolfgang Drechsler. Summary: The criticism on the smart city is used as a starting point to highlight the promises of makerspaces, that is to say, those emerging urban sites that promote sharing practices; exercise community-based forms of ...

Aegean resistance net

Summary: The current project is designed jointly by the P2P Lab and the Nomads of the Sea and will take place in May of 2016. During a half a month sailing trip, a crew of eight activists and researchers will visit five selected Greek islands for one week each. Two types of workshops will be ...

Ecotourism, education and 3d printing

Summary: In line with the “3Ducation project” (2013) which was a three-month project implemented in two high schools of Ioannina city (Greece), we establish our cooperation with the Social Cooperative Enterprise “Ecomuseum Zagori” through an educational Erasmus+ summer program. Through a one month stay, students from Portugal will be trained on binding together ecotourism and ...