Objects that Create Community. Effects of 3D Printing and Distributed Manufacturing beyond Circular Economy

Consistent with principles of Regenerative Development, which positions all aspects of human communities in balance with their local ecosystems, this paper argues that Additive Manufacturing has great potential to alter global economic and manufacturing landscapes.  Informing my practice-led research with a review of relevant scholarship I demonstrate how the convergence of 3D Printing with the Maker Movement can generate Circular Economy practices by fostering ecological awareness of material composition and overconsumption. This paper demonstrates that Additive Manufacturing also creates opportunities for intervention in pressing societal issues and the associated pressures on resource and waste management. By folding informal economies into the mainstream community bonds can be strengthened thereby increasing socioeconomic sustainability. By modelling usage of open-source Additive Manufacturing technology in the Global North, this paper, identifies barriers to its dissemination as an appropriate technology in the Global South.  Finally, I outline strategies to circumvent those obstacles such that global consumerism can indeed be disrupted via a shift in focus from underperforming Sustainable Design principles towards restorative Regenerative Development.