The Memory Wall initiative aims to highlight the recent history of the post-industrial neighborhood of La Ribera in Deusto in Spain’s Pais Vasco through the faces of the people who have given it life.
La Ribera de Deusto is a neighborhood with a lot of history. At the beginning of the 20th century, companies such as the old Artiach cookie factory were stablished in the neighborhood, and in the 1960s the area was full of life, with new residents, shops and companies. The neighborhood was like a small town where everyone knew each other, but at the beginning of the 21st century a period of decline began. Today, this neighborhood is undergoing a huge urban transformation and the industrial legacy, which represents an important part of the city’s history, is at risk of disappearing, but it is still maintained through the memory of its neighbors. That is why the Muro de la Memoria project aims to preserve these stories using digital manufacturing tools such as 3D clay printing, as a tool to strengthen community ties and value local heritage.
3D printing the Cookie Factory’s neighbours
Within the Maker Faire Bilbao creative technologies festival, the digital manufacturing laboratory Fab Lab Bilbao launched a new project focused on connecting the neighborhood’s memory and new digital manufacturing technologies. During the 2023 edition of the festival, located at the old Artiach cookie factory, the fab lab invited people linked to the neighborhood and the old cookie factory to participate in an activity to print their ceramic sculptures using open source 3D printers.
Some of the people that took part in the activity were Chamorro, the maintenance responsible of the old cookie factory for more than three decades; Azucena, MariJose, Txaro and MariLuz, workers at the seamstresses cooperative placed in the building for twenty years; the cookie workers Rosy and Francis, and the neighbors Libe, Begoña, Miquel, Iñaki, Humaran and Rosa, among many others. Their ceramic sculptures were printed using the open-source clay printer Jetclay.
Building the wall of memory
After this first initiative, throughout 2024, the Memory Wall project has continued, inviting more participants. Neighbors who have experienced the transformation of this post-industrial neighborhood, workers at the emblematic Artiach cookie factory, entrepreneurs who have developed their project on the neighborhood and professionals who spent half their lives in these industrial warehouses have come to Fab Lab Bilbao to have their sculptures printed using the open source Jetclay ceramic 3D printer.
The result of all this work has been presented at the 2024 edition of Maker Faire Bilbao, in the form of an exhibition open to the public. More than 35 heads are part of this installation, where fragments of their lives can also be read, building the history of the neighborhood together. The project will remain as an exhibition open to the public in the bar of the Espacio Open cultural center, at the entrance of the old cookie factory, so that all visitors can see it throughout the year.
Maker Faire Bilbao + Espacio Open
Organized since 2013, Maker Faire Bilbao works with the intention of bringing the latest international, technological, and avant-garde culture closer to the local social fabric–an engine of change in the environment through active, intersectional and inclusive participation. In recent years, the Festival launches the programming of professional workshops, the publication as well as the interventions and activities for all audiences, in an extended format during the month of November. As in previous editions, this year Espacio Open is organizing the Festival again. We are an ecosystem of creative projects located in the Ribera de Deusto, in Zorrotzaurre Island.
Located since 2009 in the Old Cookie Factory of Bilbao (Artiach Factory), we work at the intersection between contemporary culture, technology and social issues. We develop projects to promote critical thinking and action programs, technological impulse and support to creative and cultural industries for public and private entities / organizations. A meeting place between heritage and contemporary culture open to citizens also throughout the year thanks to its Jardin Secreto Bilbao space. A team of 14 workers and more than 110,000 annual visitors.
Learn more about Maker Faire Bilbao and Espacio Open.
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