Opendesk were recently invited to Torino Mini Maker Faire - and we didn’t want to leave! 

A fantastic city, the Italian answer to Motown is now a hub of creativity and amongst other things, the home of open source electronics pioneers Arduino. 

Hosted in a large industrial building - fittingly a former Fiat factory in the centre of the city shared by FabLab Torino, ToolBox Co-working and Officine Arduino - the Maker Faire was bustling with the inventions and innovations of the Italian maker community. We enjoyed meeting many like-minded folks working on a range of really engaging projects, such as the #hackability initiative, pairing makers and people with a specific need related to a disability. Really inspiring!

Opendesk were invited to speak about Open Making as part of the faire, which was also the opening of Casa Jasmina, an open source apartment pilot project exploring “the Internet of Things in the Home” with an aim to “integrate traditional Italian skills in furniture design and interior design with emergent skills in Italian Open-source electronics”. Established by Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi and author Bruce Sterling, Casa Jasmina has three main functions: “a real-world testbed for hacks, experiments and innovative IoT and digital fabrication projects, a curated space for public exposure of excellent artefacts and best practices and a guest-house for the occasional visitors to Toolbox, Officine Arduino and FabLab Torino.”

Above: Bruce Sterling and Opendesk Co-founder, Nick Ierodiaconou.

According to Bruce and Massimo: “Although it resembles an apartment home, Casa Jasmina is actually a combination of lab, gallery space and (air)bnb”…”Casa Jasmina is not merely a kitchen, library, bedroom and bathroom. It’s a public interface for a larger Internet-of-Things process of building things, acquiring & installing things, removing things, preparing and maintaining things, storing things recording and linking to things, and, last but very importantly, getting rid of things. We are building Casa Jasmina in order to encourage industries that will create tomorrow’s living spaces. Casa Jasmina is an incubator, and it’s purpose is industry-boosting… The successors of the Casa Jasmina project will be real homes with real, innovative products inside”

We’re therefore really excited to have been asked to design the Casa Jasmina dining table, which is a ‘forked’ version of the Opendesk Slim desk, with a re-proportionned frame and an asymmetrical top designed by Lorenzo Romagnoli of Arduino, a homely scale and shape around which we hope visitors to Casa Jasmina will enjoy many fantastic Italian meals.

Big thanks to MioCugino - Milanese Opendesk makers - for not only making the Casa Jasmina dining table, but for inviting us to their amazing home in the Turin foothills after the maker faire - to check out the local makers there. Wine & cheese makers. Amazing!