From imagined to real life

The second Maker Faire in New York is a showcase for DIY-inspired inventions, creativity and research.

Sahil: G.T.DESIGN's Eco-conscious Design

At Milan Design Week 2025, G.T.DESIGN will showcase Sahil, a jute rug collection by Deanna Comellini. This project masterfully blends sustainability, artisanal craftsmanship, and essential design, drawing inspiration from nomadic cultures and celebrating the inherent beauty of natural materials.

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A happy crowd of children, families and inventors jostled around the 12th Maker Faire—an event that showcased the best American "makers" production in the New York Hall of Science in late September. The Faire is a great big convergence of ideas that celebrates creativity, artistic ability, scientific expertise and manual projects with a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) input.

Makers are the contemporary version of the lone inventor, a positive figure with an inquisitive and open mind who loves making things with his/her own hands. There is, however, one crucial difference from the old-fashioned inventor—the Internet and knowledge-sharing now mean that makers are members of a digital community comprising thousands of enthusiasts, democratic and often inspired by the open-source philosophy. Makers are truly a sprawling cultural and social movement based on free and constructive collaboration and that meets up in real places such as Maker spaces and Fab Labs—which provide the tools for experimenting and sharing ideas/knowledge—and events like the Maker Faire. Whether digital or physical, these meeting places encourage dialogue and relationships from which to learn and share the intrinsic value of an object made with your own hands, as well as the true pleasure of lending physical form to thoughts and creating order out of chaos.

Top: Created by kinetic sculptor Ryan C Doyle and LED-light artist Teddy Lo, the huge steel dragon GonKiRin captivated the attention of those in attendance at Maker Faire. <br />Above: The New York Hall of Science, the science and technology museum in Queens, showcases projects that art part art, part craft, part technology . — Top: Created by kinetic sculptor Ryan C Doyle and LED-light artist Teddy Lo, the huge steel dragon GonKiRin captivated the attention of those in attendance at Maker Faire.
Above: The New York Hall of Science, the science and technology museum in Queens, showcases projects that art part art, part craft, part technology .

Making things is the most powerful method we have to solve problems, express ideas and lend substance to our world. What we make and how defines who we are and conveys who we want to be. Making is key to the survival of many people. For others it is a vocation or a choice that allows them to think, invent and innovate. For others again, it is simply the pleasure of being able to shape matter or say "I made it". The DIY phenomenon is spreading in part because it is cool to make or use handmade objects and partly for its cultural, social and financial significance. People return to DIY as a possible alternative means of earning a living in times of recession such as today.

The monumental science museum in Queens, New York played host to the 35,000 participants in the 12th Maker Faire. First held in 2006, the event is organised by MAKE magazine and O’Reilly Media.

Everybody at the Maker Faire is an active consumer, a creator of experiences, projects and ideas that ever more frequently become products, after attracting the interest of large corporations. Impossible and improbable projects become reality and economically viable thanks to formulae and equilibriums created ad hoc. Inventing a project often means inventing a job for yourself and a new entrepreneurial model. Chaotic and informal communities, dreams and dreamers often give rise to companies that are also creative in the way they do business. Indeed, ideas shown at the Maker Faire are now attracting major investment funds and large retail chains. Moreover, the online platforms serving this community are also becoming tempting to large companies. One example of this is Instructables , the most famous tutorial-sharing community recently acquired by Autodesk, the producer of AutoCAD.

One thing that is common to all the 21st-century inventors is the desire to produce their ideas themselves in a process based on technology, respect for the environment, sustainability, education and the return to local manufacturing.

Solar Sewing, a portable sewing machine driven by solar power or a bicycle-generator. Conceived by Paul Nosa, it sewed patches and decorations to visitor requests.

Artists, computer experts, designers, entrepreneurs and teachers—makers have a mixed background that is expressed to its full potential in personal projects shared with the community. The featured sections devised to guide people through the Maker Faire maze are Arts, Crafts, Engineering, Food/Sustainability, Green, Music, Science and Young Makers. One thing that is common to all the 21st-century inventors is the desire to produce their ideas themselves in a process based on technology, respect for the environment, sustainability, education and the return to local manufacturing. An ethical, aesthetic and cultural dissatisfaction with mass production has resulted in the development of projects, limited editions and collection pieces that promote sustainability, social justice and recycling. ReYoo, for instance, celebrates the recycling of things found in rubbish tips to produce new home furnishings and accessories. Many sharing workshops and platforms for big and small have been created to help people understand what lies behind the technology and approach science without reverential trepidation. It is well worth doing because the potential and consequences of practical research are truly endless.

Circus Warehouse performed several times during the Maker Faire weekend and gave visitors an opportunity to learn the basics of the Nouveau Cirque.

The chance to demystify technology and demolish the psychological barrier that holds us back from science could easily change each and every one of us from user to active creator—all the more so given that the modest sum of 500 dollars will buy you one of the most useful and fascinating inventions seen at the Maker Faire, a PCR Machine that is a biological tool for DIY DNA analysis. Education has always been important in the maker world and one example is Blu, a teaching-robot kit based on Arduino and developed by 15-year-old(!) Bill Hunt.

Another view of the Circus Warehouse, one of the fringe experimental areas at the Maker Faire.

From highly original and interesting new technological ideas to the distinctly bizarre born in the imaginations of electronic craftsmen and lovers of digital DIY, we came across many useful, fun and surprising objects at the Maker Faire, such as the GPS lion-tracking collars created by Italian designer Benedetta Piantella for Ground Lab and the DIY Book Scanning, a mechanical scanner that can copy 200 pages per hour without ruining books and automatically send the scan to archive.org. Our favourite, however, remains the TV-B-Gone, a small remote control that, with a simple click, turns off the TVs that cause acoustic pollution in public spaces such as airports and restaurants.

An object made with the MakerBot 3D open-source printer. Founded in 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer and Zach Smith, MakerBot Industries has also launched an online community, Thingiverse.com, where users can share their files and projects.

This chaotic and energetic movement of people, ideas and open software and hardware is also applying the same development dynamics to the design of more conventional products. The Maker Faire gave huge exposure to SketchChair, open-source software that allows people to design and make their own furniture and then share the results in an online gallery. The approach and the production and commercial supply chain of the last century are slowly changing. On the one hand, people are increasingly making themselves what they cannot find in production. On the other, designers are increasingly changing from creators of objects that are then entrusted to manufacturers to creators of designs that are sold directly to end users, who then produce them using digital manufacturing machines. Desktop-manufacturing technology such as the RepRap and MakerBot 3D open-source printers and related services such as Ponoko, an online laser-cutting-on-demand platform, are becoming extremely accessible and economical. In conjunction with the Maker Faire, the New Museum in New York has launched the MakerBot Challenge (deadline 31 October) to test out potential and concrete models that supersede design conventions.

SketchChair, open-source software that allows people to design and make their own furniture and then share the results in an online gallery.

Makers are no longer a counterculture but have gone mainstream, with 35,000 people having visited the event and browsed through the creations of the 500 inventors who brought them to New York. In the United States, they constitute a tangible economic and social reality that the traditional world of economics and design will soon have to face up to and the Maker Faire is its preferred observatory and driving force.

Electric arcs and experimental effects produced by the combined use of Tesla coils and a Faraday cage.

A new world of Italian style

The result of an international joint venture, Nexion combines the values of Made in Italy with those of Indian manufacturing. A partnership from which the Lithic collection of ceramic surfaces was born.

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From imagined to real life

The second Maker Faire in New York is a showcase for DIY-inspired inventions, creativity and research.

Sahil: G.T.DESIGN's Eco-conscious Design

A new world of Italian style

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