Ongoing projects

The P2P Lab is working on the following projects: “Cosmolocalism” – A European Research Council project (site) “Exploring a post-growth political economy” (site soon) “Distributed Design Market Platform” – A Creative Europe project (site) “Centrinno” – An H2020 project (site) “Smooth” – An H2020 project (site) “T-Factor” – An H2020 project (site) “ComPra” – An Erasmus+ ...

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 ...

Open design & manufacturing

Full title: “A knowledge Alliance between HEIs, makers and manufacturers to boost Open Design & Manufacturing in Europe“. Summary: Open Design and Manufacturing (OD&M) is an ERASMUS+ project which develops an Alliance between Higher Education Institution (HEIs), traditional manufacturers and innovation communities of digital-savvy makers, in order to set up a trust-based framework able to generate ...

Evaluating open hardware from an ecological economics perspective

Check this project.

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 ...

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 ...

The potential of digital commons to spur technological advance

Summary: This project will include two in-depth case studies of prominent digital commons cases which have arguably propelled much innovation and entrepreneurial activity. First, we will study the Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) patent which expired in 2005 and has widely been used in the 3D printing industry. A comparative data analysis before and after the ...

Digital commons, local manufacturing and sustainability

Full title: “The convergence of digital commons with local manufacturing from a degrowth perspective: Two illustrative cases”, co-authored by Vasilis Kostakis, Minas Liarokapis, Kostas Latoufis & Michel Bauwens. Summary: The emerging discussion about the sustainability potential of distributed production is the starting point for this paper. The focus is on the “design global, manufacture local” model. This ...

Design global, manufacture local: Exploring the contours of an emerging productive model

This article aims to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on post-capitalist construction by exploring the contours of a commons-oriented productive model. On the basis of this model called “design global-manufacture local”, we argue that recent techno-economic developments around the emergence of commons-based peer production and desktop manufacturing technologies, may signal new alternative paths of social ...

The materiality of the immaterial: ICTs and the digital commons

Special issue for tripleC: “The materiality of the immaterial: ICTs and the digital commons“, co-edited by Vasilis Kostakis & Andreas Roos. Summary: With an escalating environmental crisis and an unprecedented increase of ICT diversity and use, it is more crucial than ever to understand the underlying material aspects of the ICT infrastructure. This special issue ...