Red Door Lab, new company in residence at LABoral
It defines itself as a social innovation lab and will collaborate with the Art Centre in training, consulting, design and promotion of digital manufacturing projects
Fran Flórez, Raquel Gallego y Ana Puerto, at Red Door Lab in the Arte Centre. Photo: LABoral/S. Redruello
Red Door Lab, a newly created company that defines itself as a social innovation lab, has moved to LABoral as a new company in residency. Red Door Lab focuses on the development of an innovation and creativity environment, where companies, public bodies and citizens can get involved, taking advantage of the drive of ICTs, in the innovation process by co-creating and experiencing technology in a direct, lively and entertaining way.
The company consists of three partners with very different CVs and life experiences, Raquel Gallego, Fran Flórez and Ana Puerto, architecture, pedagogy, public employment, law, technology, equality, creativity and design may be the best tags to define the skills that come together in this small company. The company was created with the aim of developing innovative and creative projects related with companies, design and digital manufacturing.
The partners explain that, in order to do so, they will start from the concept of social innovation, launching collaboration projects and partnerships that allow social and business needs to be resolved. “We want to learn, commit ourselves and transform our close environment, taking advantage of sinergies at local level, while at the same time building bridges to other regions at global level”, they explain.
Red Door Lab S.L. develops projects mainly in three fields of activity:
- Educational innovation. Conceptualisation, design and execution of training and educational projects related with science, technology and the information society. We understand technology and gadgets as tools at the service of the educational community. These tools accelerate and support the teaching and learning processes. The main end-users of these projects are educational entities and business entities that want to learn in a different and entertaining way.
- Design and innovation of spaces. The definition of a space has a direct impact on the interactions and processes that will take place in it. The company develops comprehensive projects, from technically and architecturally defining the spaces, to preparing a proper socialisation strategy, leveraging resources and fostering its collaboration and sustainability.
• Creativity and product design. Ideas are endless, they just need a little push to see the light. Using creativity techniques and sessions, new ideas emerge. These ideas are disruptive and innovative and help improve processes, products or services. These same techniques are used internally to generate and develop new designs and products.
• Digital manufacturing lab. In the phylosophical background of digital manufacturing lies the idea of the democratisation of design and manufacturing technology. It is reaching a key point where anyone will be able to design and manufacture creating new business models and discovering new opportunities. Not only physical things are manufactured, but also knowledge can be shared. For this reason, there is always an educational work behind. Red Door Lab presents itself as an open space for ideas and people.
The collaboration between LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial and Red Door Lab started naturally and logically. Over the last years LABoral, thanks to the development of fabLAB, has become the Asturian point of reference for digital manufacturing. Its facilities, educational programming and level of qualification of its technical staff are a magnet “we can’t resist”, as they put it. “They have a dissemination component which, although it has got through in the educational field, we believe we can boost it in the Asturian business world”. At Red Door Lab they intend to convey a complementary business vision that respects the open-space phylosophy of LABoral. Thus, both entities will work together in the implementation of training, consulting and design projects and in promoting digital manufacturing.
As a resident company, Red Door Lab S.L. has a space at its disposal to develop and test an open, innovative and business-oriented “Digital Manufacturing Laboratory”.
LABoral and company residencies
The company-in-residency programme is an initiative of LABoral in collaboration with the Science and Technology Park of Gijón that aims to explore the various benefits that can be brought about by the interdisciplinary collaborative work between artists, creators and entrepreneurs, whose activities have traditionally followed different paths, in such a way that an actual feedback takes place fostering innovation.
This collaboration is based on the belief that networking between business fields and other fields not related with business will be able to add up their resources in the current economic situation and, what is even more important, to open new ways and to generate opportunities in both directions.
According to LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial’s mission, the centre must be the force driving cultural industries, and this project falls within this framework. LABoral, whose DNA is in the intersection between art, science, technology and society, and without loosing sight of their vocation to be a Centre devoted to research, production and dissemination of new forms of artistic and industrial creation, has also worked in these directions.
With these residency programmes, LABoral aims to go one step further and explore and promote other ways of doing, thinking and producing that will result from the implementation of change processes based mainly on the knowledge exchange and the sharing of common values of different origins.
So far, besides the recently incorporated Red Door Lab, other companies in residency trying to stablish synergies with LABoral resulting from the use of the resources of the Art Centre and of their own are the following:
- Altabox. This company has devoted its residency at Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial to the project of interactive fitting rooms, The Fitting Room of the Future.
- Cluster Audiovisual de Asturias. The residency of this professional association, made up by competitive, innovative and creative companies representing the chain value of the Asturian audiovisual sector, is aimed at searching for funding sources for audiovisual projects developed jointly by both entitities.
- Association of Audiovisual Production Enterprises of the Principality of Asturias. Its aim is to create spaces that foster exchange between entities fostering collaboration and helping its members start processes where experimentation and creation combine.
- Cucareliquia, this brand of high value accessories from Asturias intends to foster interaction of Designers, plastic artists and craftspeople in the creative process.
Red Door Lab’s team
Raquel Gallego Lorenzo is an architect and co-founder of FABberz, (New York City, 2009) jointly with Josiah Barnes, (www.fabberz.com, based in New York City). Together they have created the educational platform DIA Designing Interface Architecture, which organises and holds workshops at International level intended to explore the conceptual and material opportunities resulting from the use of digital manufacturing as the technology to develop architecture. She graduated at ESAYA, Higher College for Art and Architecture, (Madrid 2004). Master’s degree at IAAC, Advanced Architecture Institute of Catalonia (Barcelona 2009). Her interest in digital manufacturing led her to take an MIT course called FAB Academy, which she completed in 2012. Over the last two years she has taken an active part as a teacher in courses related with digital manufacturing and parametric architecture.
Francisco Flórez Cortés has studied Education Science, specialising in ICT’s pedagogy and teaching methods. After more than 15 years developing technological consulting and development projects, he holds two master degrees: Technology Consulting at the EOI and e-Commerce at the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña. He has been founder, partner and manager of Versionoriginal Soluciones Tecnológicas S.L. where he has developed e-commerce and e-learning platforms. Over the last 10 years he has been a member of the team of Fundación CTIC, where he has designed, coordinated and executed projects of literacy and promotion of technology and entrepreneurship, focusing on social innovation and creativity actions. In 2012 he started to work with 3D printers, he got his training at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, where he started with the design and manufacturing of pieces through the use of 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC machines and the introduction of Arduino-based electronic components.
Ana Puerto is a lawyer and she has practiced her activity in several lawfirms in Madrid and Gijón, specialising in urban development, commercial law and economic criminal law. Master’s degree in legal advice at Instituto de Empresa, she has specialised training in International Law, urban planning law and Business Mediation. As a member of the Management team of the City Council of Gijón, she has been in charge of the Department of Equality and Youth. There she has acquired experience in design, planning and management of public policies and in management of projects and human resources. She has developed actions related with civic participation, fight against gender-based violence and the implementation of measures aimed at fostering labour and entrepreneurship gender equality. Currently, in addition to her work as a lawyer, she takes part as a partner or manager in several business projects.
