O papel do designer na cultura do DIY e sua atuação em espaços maker no Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The Do-It-Yourself is a movement that gained strength in the United States but it have deeper and older roots, like the 1860’s sloyd in Sweden. This movement, that arrived in Brazil a few years, brought with it new business models, like shared workshops and practical courses, as woodwork with a focus on hobbyists, on these places known as Maker Spaces. In the actual deindustrialization scenery and economic crisis, the emergence of these spaces opened doors for designers who wish to develop authorial pieces and work directly with an artisanal production of their pieces in small or medium batches. The main objective of this work is to observe and map the advances in the field of product design within maker spaces in the context of the DIY culture in the city of Rio de Janeiro, identifying the ways of acting and the contributions both for prosumers and for the designers themselves. Through a series of interviews with designers residing in these places, it was possible to observe the modes of action of each one within the space, analyzing their life histories and their professional choices. In this research, fifteen formal and informal designers were interviewed. In the sample, a low adherence of formal designers acting as residents in the researched places was perceived, which may be related to the low disclosure of the existence of these places to work and to the teaching of design with little incentive in the development of practical manual skills.