Catalan TV Channel TV3 recently visited IAAC facilities to film a couple of episodes of weekly show “Ja T’ho Faràs”, which features “Do It Yourself” solutions for home using low cost, sustainable and recycling materials. IAAC’s participation at this show will allow to introduce the Catalan audience two cutting-edge initiatives developed in our institution, such as the FabTextiles lab at the Fab Lab Barcelona, which focuses on how clothing and textile complements can be manufactured using digital manufacturing technology, as well as the self-sufficient urban agriculture initiative Aquapioneers, born at the Green Fab Lab in IAAC’s Valldaura campus.

The first episode on digital fabricated textiles was aired last December, where FabTextiles leader and Master in Design for Emergent Futures (MDEF) Faculty Anastasia Pistofidou, explained to the audience in a didactic way the bioplastics manufacturing process to make clothing and textile accessories (in this case, an apron) as well as the use of 3D printers and laser-cutters as essential technology to complete their design and production.

You can watch now the first episode on Fab Textiles here (video in Catalan/Spanish):

The second episode filmed by TV3 is about IAAC-born initiative Aquapioneers created by Guillaume Teyssié and Loïc Le Goueff. The project has been developed at Barcelona’s Green Fab Lab, supported by Fab Lab Barcelona and IAAC, that aims to promote sustainable urban farming in households, offices and schools with a process called Aquaponics.

Aquaponics is an ancient cultivation technique that was already used by the Aztecs that allows cultivating on water, without soil, making use of the fish excrements as fertilizer. It is 100% organic, twice as fast as traditional agriculture and saves 90% of water compared to traditional agriculture. Aquaponics is ideal for growing food all year round and vertical farming, a great match for the lack of space in cities.

The Aquapioneers kit combines an aquarium and a garden in a compact wooden design. It is the first open source aquaponics invention designed for urban farming that has been designed and beta-tested to be made in any Fab Lab or Maker space around the world. All their designs are Open Source and thought to be crafted locally in digital fabrication labs, among others, in order to avoid the environmental impact of transporting materials. This way, anyone anywhere can download the designs and adapt them to their local conditions. You can watch Aquapioneers participation in the show here.