Experience circular design – How are products created that are designed to be circular from the outset? At the MAKER CHALLENGE 2026 meetup, experts from design for human nature, Indeed Innovation, and the Cradle to Cradle NGO Hamburg showed how physical prototyping, systemic thinking, and principle-based circular economy shape innovative product ideas.
In the new episode of Tech Affair – Industry for Future, Dr. Manuel Moritz from the New Production Institute and Dr. Susanne Vernim from the software company Tulip Interfaces talk about pop-up factories – how flexible, mobile production structures are becoming a reality, what opportunities they offer for industry and society, and why they could change the future of production.
The dtec.bw Annual Conference 2025 at Helmut Schmidt University focused on research with added value for all dimensions. Topics discussed included digitalization, future technologies, and local production concepts such as Fab City. Interactive exhibits and live demonstrations offered practical insights into the circular economy, resilience, and innovative production approaches.
Newly published: The Fab City Hamburg Playbook is here - a practice-oriented guide to local, digital and circular production in cities. The result of a four-year transdisciplinary research project shows how urban value creation can be designed sustainably.
New release: The Fab City Hamburg Playbook is here — a practical guide to local, digital, and circular production in cities. The result of a four-year transdisciplinary research project, it shows how urban value creation can be made sustainable.
At re:publica 25, experts from development cooperation, education funding and the tech scene discussed how digital skills can contribute to global transformation. Among other things, the panel discussed the potential of open source hardware and makerspaces, with a focus on the African continent.
Urban Digital Twins combine 3D city models with other urban data and enable realistic analyses (www.connectedurbantwins.de) and this is exactly where Fab City Hamburg comes in, how the city of Hamburg can be made more sustainable and resilient with the help of digital twins.
The OpenLab Microfactory is a small-scale factory with various digital manufacturing machines, such as a small laser cutter, a CNC milling machine and a 3D printer from the OpenLab Starter Kit, a set of open-source machine tools: In the Pop-Up Circular Hub, the New Production Institute of Helmut Schmidt University presents a small-scale factory in the middle of the city on more than 50 square meters.
We were delighted to officially inaugurate the OpenLab Tunis at the CETTEX. The OpenLab Tunis is an open laboratory for digital manufacturing to promote innovation and local value creation with digital manufacturing tools on the way to Industry 4.0 in Tunisia.
Visit to OpenLab Hamburg by Renata Siagian, Consul General of the Republic of Indonesia Hamburg, Colonel Budi Wibowo, Head of the Defense Department / Defense Attaché of the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Berlin, and Vice Air Marshal Arif Widianto.
Das New Production Institute ist aus der Forschungsgruppe Wertschöpfungssystematik des Laboratorium Fertigungstechnik an der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität hervorgegangen.
