The South Bronx community suffers from environmental degradation, crippling poverty, endemic public health problems, and low educational aspirations among its youth. Sustainable South Bronx seeks to inspire area residents to demonstrate their own strength and vision by helping to create a more livable, breathable, and vibrant community from the grassroots level up.

SSBx is partnering with MIT to bring a FabLab (Fabrication Laboratory) to the South Bronx. FabLab is an international project started at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms , aiming to bring “digital fabrication”, the modern means of production, to ordinary people for solving community problems. Ideas are conceived and designed in the digital world, and can be realized in the physical world through the FabLab. Equally as important, these ideas, designs, and schematics can be shared digitally through the international FabLab network as a kind of “Open Source Hardware.”

Not only will the above trailer be used as a temporary space for teaching and design sessions, but the machines inside will actually help build the permanent South Bronx FabLab. The inside cabinetry and furniture was designed and built by MIT students and faculty, and the mural work was done by South Bronx-based TME Studios.

The SSBX FabLab will bring exceptional community access to emerging technology, as well as a link to the M.I.T learning community and the burgeoning international network of Fabricators. The capability for design and fabrication opens up possibilities for solving local problems. Since the local community itself will foster this innovation, it will be highly sustainable. SSB intends to use the FabLab network to link up with people in other parts of the world experiencing similar conditions. Since the South Bronx deals with most of New York City’s trash, we hope to use abundantly available recyclable materials for projects.

The SSBxFab project is coordinated by Jon Santiago, a staff member of Sustainable South Bronx. Jon ensures that the SSB FabLab is operational and is connected to a broad community through cross-collaborative digital media. He works with SSBx staff to ensure that the FabLab’s capabilities are considered in all programmatic endeavors, and with educational instructors to ensure successful implementation of curriculum and project-based educational sessions. Jon has a B.S. in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); where he worked under Professor Neil Gershenfeld as an undergraduate research assistant in the Center for Bits and Atoms, the cross-campus interdisciplinary research consortium that began the international FabLab program. Exposed to a diverse research environment that brought together computer scientists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, mathematicians, physicists, and biologists, Jon grew an appreciation not only for science and engineering, but also the sharing and collaboration that is at the heart of the FabLab project.