brief & history

Simon Fraser University, as an institution leading in engagement, education, and community, was seeking methods upon which they could deepen their role in each of these segments. Our class, the Fall 2017 cohort of Business of Design, lead by School of Interactive Arts professor Dr. Rob Woodbury and Beedie School of Business professor Dr. Lisa Papania were tasked with creating a "makerspace" by the end of the semester. The 11 students, representing 3 faculties, were given an 1350 sqft. space to tackle this wicked problem. We defined our goal as "create a permanent space at SFU Surrey Campus for students from all disciplines, community, and industry to come together and create." Collaboration and co-creation, we believe, will bring goodwill to the university, improve the student education through experiential learning, and strengthen the universities' ties with the community and industry.

Throughout the fall semester, we worked on learning the meaning of being a maker and the role of such a space in the SFU context. We explored in depth the vision of the university and the desires of the stakeholders through site visits and expert interviews. To understand our fellow student's needs we worked with them in their maker projects. At the same time, we started iterating on the space, tools it will need, layout of the room, and much more to put our learnings and assumptions to the test. Towards the end we assembled our vision statement, the motivation for our work.

"Develop a place and program for SFU that further engages with their students & the Surrey community to bolster innovative, entrepreneurial, and economic growth."

The vision of our solution is to establish a place within close proximity to Surrey Campus at the heart of the rebuilt downtown Surrey that serves as a hub for education, industry, and community to collaborate and co-create. External programs and SFU courses that empower collaboration and co-creation will be invited to be run out of the space. Not only does this serve to enrich student's education experience and community interactions but also cements the City of Surrey and SFU as centres of design and innovation in alginment with the City and the university's strategic vision.

Once we determined our vision and with a clear grasp of our outcomes, we invited important university stakeholders, from Deans to Executive Directors, to introduce them to the idea and engage in dialoge on the creation of such a place. This event was held within the our prototype makerspace.

result & report