AMP – Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform
The Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform is a design experiment that links recycling with making to empower Africans to make inclusive futures. To design and prototype the AMP platform, a “transformal” approach was used, which mediates “formal” global systems and networks with locally adaptive “informal” modes of production and distribution. AMP has three components that function together: the spacecraft, or makerspace kiosk; maker toolkits or add-ons, which are customizable to support what makers want to make; and a mobile app that amplifies makers’ capacity through information sharing. The spacecraft has a modular construction system that is light, mobile, and expandable, featuring prefabricated (recycled) steel semi-octet trusses that can be assembled, disassembled, and reassembled as needed. Material (pieces of iron rods) used for fabricating the spacecraft can be gathered from scrap building materials. Basic fabrication diagrams, instructions, and digital 3D models for the AMP spacecraft are available at qamp.net
African cities hold kernels of local knowledge and practices for global learning. This demands rethinking not only models of urban innovation—to integrate more diversity and a range of expertise—but also operations: how to embark everyone, democratically, in co-creation of their city? Through locally driven design and making opportunities, AMP aims to address urban resilience and community empowerment. This open-source, community-based project enables grassroots makers in resource-poor environments to:
- Gather resources and tools,
- Learn by doing and from others,
- Produce more and better items,
- Trade to generate steady income, and
- Amplify their reputations as makers.
Yasmine Abbas & Osseo-Asare, Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP), Mixed-media installation, Commissioned by Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, Imminent Commons – Production City (Curators: Yerin Kang & Jie-Eun Hwang) | Seoul, Korea.
September 1 – November 5, 2017
2017 Seoul Biennale Co-directors: Hyungmin Pai, Alejandro Zaera-Polo
© POSTERS : AMP MAKERS COLLECTIVE
September 1 – November 5, 2017
2017 Seoul Biennale Co-directors: Hyungmin Pai, Alejandro Zaera-Polo
© POSTERS : AMP MAKERS COLLECTIVE
Abbas, Y. & Osseo-Asare, D. (2018). in Pai, H. (Ed.), Imminent Commons: Live from Seoul. p. 65 and p. 67. Actar
© Image: AMP MAKERS COLLECTIVE