FabLab (an acronym in English of Fabrication Laboratory) is a space in which physical objects are manufactured on a personal or local scale that houses computer-controlled machines capable of manufacturing almost anything we can imagine.
Its peculiarity lies in its size and it being closely connected to society.
FabLabs lie in two socio-technolocial movements: DIY (do-it-yourself) or self-production; the open source or free information and knowledge flow. According to these premises, the FabLab is developed whose purpose is to act as the connection to join academic training with the professional world by combining both and generating synergies on its installations.
The FabLab concept emerged in the first few years of this century at the Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) belonging to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and directed by Neil Gershenfeld.
It came about from collaboration between the Grassroots Invention Group and the the CBA in the heart of MIT’s Media Lab; research is about the relation between information content and its physical representation and empowering communities thanks to basic technology.
While such research is underway, the CBA receives finance from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to purchase machines capable of “building almost everything”.
