Laborando

Otero 246, Chacarita

Makerspace

Space size 400 m²

Opened in January 2014

Structure type Private company

Explored in January 2019


Laborando emerges as a solution to the problem of many makers: they can not find a place to build, cut, assemble, paint, sand. It emerges as a proposal for those whose project is already monopolizing their home and they need to take the next step. For those who can, the next step is to rent a barn, a garage or move to a bigger house. For those who are still in early stages of testing or growth, Laborando is the answer. We form a community of people who make: makers, designers of all branches, hobbyists, photographers, potters, engineers, carpenters, blacksmiths and many more. For us, Laborando is much more than a proposal of space to work, it is a hotbed of friends, talents and contacts with what we most like to do.

Main interests

Community Entrepreneurship Education Craftsmanship

This workshop is great for:

Entrepreneurs Designers Makers pro Small & medium businesses Artists

Our workshop

Learn more about our space, members, machines & services!

Adrenaline. Magic.

“These feelings occurred when you make your idea becoming real”.

This passion of making, discovered during her childhood, led Pia Ferreya to choose industrial design as a career to design real products to answer real needs. However, after her studies in Buenos Aires, she couldn’t find any space to build her ideas and the only jobs offered consisted of designing products without making them. Moreover, with a bunch of friends, she was looking for courses to improve her skills in designing and making and she quickly realized that it didn’t exist such offer for workers. Her visit to a makerspace during her holidays was a revelation. She made researches and discovered that such place gathers everything her friends and she was looking for and even more: learning, making and collaborating.

At the end of 2014, with 2 friends, they launched a website to pitch their ideas* and to offer courses of design and making. Their success confirmed the need of opening a makerspace so after 2 years she left her job and opened with a partner the first physical space of Laborando. “Make, learn(by making) and share” are the values of Laborando but more than a space, Laborando aims to be designed as a tool to enable anyone to go further, faster and better in her/his project.

Nowadays, the space is still valued as a tool but it has been adapted to fit with the Argentinian culture. Its great success lies in its strong community of permanent entrepreneurs and the great filling ratio of its weekly courses.

If the objective is to open an entire building to gather dozens of entrepreneurs and artisans and to offer to anyone tools and support to start making products, in short-term Pia is looking for consolidating her community of members offering them new services and for increasing the number of courses in partnership with other spaces.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” This famous quote of Confucius who promoted learning by doing makes lots of sense for Pia. She put it as the heart of her space philosophy but she also experimented it as an entrepreneur.

She started this project with 2 friends through a website, apart from her job. After 1 year, when she decided to be fully dedicated and to open a physical space, her friends left the project for personal and professional reasons. She made a partnership with the owner of a space and brought him the Laborando brand and users. After more than a year, she decided to open her own space and to run it alone. Her experience with her previous partnership was useful but she had to learn a lot, experimenting all the times, to handle the various tasks required to manage everything by herself.

Hopefully, she can count on a strong community of permanent members. Some of them joined her the first month when she opened the new space, when a lot of works needed to be done. Thus, they felt part of the project. They support her in her daily tasks and are proactive to improve the space, offering their experience and competencies within their time available. She can also rely on a community of teachers who realize the courses, some of them also members of the space. These latter have been recruited through 2 “open calls”. They have different backgrounds, experiences and competencies but they all share the values of Laborando and they all believe in its mission designed by Pia.

For the beginning of 2019, she is looking for interns to help them developing her offer in services for members, the courses, to improve the communication and to organize events.

Don’t expect to find an open main door and a big “Laborando” sign to indicate the location of the space from the street. The entrance is discreet, it looks by the entrance of a family house. Don’t expect to see a lot of users using digital tools all around the space with projects exhibited from the entrance. The space is divided into 2 areas: one area of co-working, clean and silent with a kitchen to share a maté or a tea and one area divided into workshops with dust, big tools and noise. These places are occupied during all the day by 7 permanent members or residents, mainly entrepreneurs (designer and videos maker, 3D printing business, ceramic artists, sculptor, hobbyist maker and programmer, …) and during the evening, after 6 pm, by “students” who come to attend courses.

The residents benefit from their own silent desk and from a cubicle where they can store their materials and projects and work alone or in a team. The desks such as the cubicles are designed to be half closed, half opened to isolate people while giving them the opportunity to share with others. If the members were looking (mainly on google) a “co-working with workshops” to put all their machines and work on their project, what they appreciated in Laborando is the great atmosphere of work, due to the space arrangement but also to the community. Collaboration is natural and each member is complimentary.

The students have different profiles: most of them are administrators, looking for manual leisure after work or for learning new skills to make a professional reconversion. The remaining are hobbyists or professional makers who need to acquire competences to go further in their projects. Since 2015, they have been 700 to attend the weekly courses offered by Laborando (forge, carpentry, video motion, 3D designs, modeling, …). The success lies in several factors: a good location, evening hours, courses accessible for beginners, courses designed to fit real needs, good casting of teachers and above all courses designed as an experience. People should learn with pleasure which comes with good food, good atmosphere, personalized attention during the courses in small team and sharing between students. A review is asked to participants to identify the improvements and increase progressively the quality.

The key success which enables Laborando to attract its members and students was the good ranking in google. The website, the blog and the social networks are the perfect combinations to provide to everyone with all the information about the philosophy of the space, the courses, the memberships and the events. People should have access to want they are looking for in less than 2 clicks so all the digital communication have been designed to comply with this rule.

In short-term, Pia is planning to open new services for the members such as a map of providers recommended by the community or support for the accounting or the marketing. Partnerships should be signed with other spaces to open more courses and offer them in new areas.

A year after opening her own space, Pia reached the breakeven. The 7 annual memberships cover the fixed costs (space rental, supplies) and the incomes generated by the courses enable to cover the exceptional costs. What remains is invested to equipped and improved the space. The investment remaining to fully equipped and arrange the space is estimated to 6 more months of work and then the benefits will be used to pay her salary and to develop the services and new courses. 7 other annual memberships are available so one short-term objective will be to find new members to fully used the space and generate monthly revenues.

This fast rentability has been permitted thanks to a strategic choice: Pia decided to not buy any digital machines but to look for members who can bring their digital tool and will offer training, use and services with it (CNC, 3D printing, …). As a result, she didn’t have to invest in these machines or to hire a technical manager in charge of the security and training of users. Moreover the focused on renting the space to professionals with a long-term membership rather than offering services for the general but punctual public. Eventually, the courses offered by her team of teachers guarantee her a sustainable and complementary income. The income of each course is divided 50% between Laborando (who provides the space, the communication, the logistic, the food) and the teachers.

Adrenaline. Magic.

“These feelings occurred when you make your idea becoming real”.

This passion of making, discovered during her childhood, led Pia Ferreya to choose industrial design as a career to design real products to answer real needs. However, after her studies in Buenos Aires, she couldn’t find any space to build her ideas and the only jobs offered consisted of designing products without making them. Moreover, with a bunch of friends, she was looking for courses to improve her skills in designing and making and she quickly realized that it didn’t exist such offer for workers. Her visit to a makerspace during her holidays was a revelation. She made researches and discovered that such place gathers everything her friends and she was looking for and even more: learning, making and collaborating.

At the end of 2014, with 2 friends, they launched a website to pitch their ideas* and to offer courses of design and making. Their success confirmed the need of opening a makerspace so after 2 years she left her job and opened with a partner the first physical space of Laborando. “Make, learn(by making) and share” are the values of Laborando but more than a space, Laborando aims to be designed as a tool to enable anyone to go further, faster and better in her/his project.

Nowadays, the space is still valued as a tool but it has been adapted to fit with the Argentinian culture. Its great success lies in its strong community of permanent entrepreneurs and the great filling ratio of its weekly courses.

If the objective is to open an entire building to gather dozens of entrepreneurs and artisans and to offer to anyone tools and support to start making products, in short-term Pia is looking for consolidating her community of members offering them new services and for increasing the number of courses in partnership with other spaces.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” This famous quote of Confucius who promoted learning by doing makes lots of sense for Pia. She put it as the heart of her space philosophy but she also experimented it as an entrepreneur.

She started this project with 2 friends through a website, apart from her job. After 1 year, when she decided to be fully dedicated and to open a physical space, her friends left the project for personal and professional reasons. She made a partnership with the owner of a space and brought him the Laborando brand and users. After more than a year, she decided to open her own space and to run it alone. Her experience with her previous partnership was useful but she had to learn a lot, experimenting all the times, to handle the various tasks required to manage everything by herself.

Hopefully, she can count on a strong community of permanent members. Some of them joined her the first month when she opened the new space, when a lot of works needed to be done. Thus, they felt part of the project. They support her in her daily tasks and are proactive to improve the space, offering their experience and competencies within their time available. She can also rely on a community of teachers who realize the courses, some of them also members of the space. These latter have been recruited through 2 “open calls”. They have different backgrounds, experiences and competencies but they all share the values of Laborando and they all believe in its mission designed by Pia.

For the beginning of 2019, she is looking for interns to help them developing her offer in services for members, the courses, to improve the communication and to organize events.

Don’t expect to find an open main door and a big “Laborando” sign to indicate the location of the space from the street. The entrance is discreet, it looks by the entrance of a family house. Don’t expect to see a lot of users using digital tools all around the space with projects exhibited from the entrance. The space is divided into 2 areas: one area of co-working, clean and silent with a kitchen to share a maté or a tea and one area divided into workshops with dust, big tools and noise. These places are occupied during all the day by 7 permanent members or residents, mainly entrepreneurs (designer and videos maker, 3D printing business, ceramic artists, sculptor, hobbyist maker and programmer, …) and during the evening, after 6 pm, by “students” who come to attend courses.

The residents benefit from their own silent desk and from a cubicle where they can store their materials and projects and work alone or in a team. The desks such as the cubicles are designed to be half closed, half opened to isolate people while giving them the opportunity to share with others. If the members were looking (mainly on google) a “co-working with workshops” to put all their machines and work on their project, what they appreciated in Laborando is the great atmosphere of work, due to the space arrangement but also to the community. Collaboration is natural and each member is complimentary.

The students have different profiles: most of them are administrators, looking for manual leisure after work or for learning new skills to make a professional reconversion. The remaining are hobbyists or professional makers who need to acquire competences to go further in their projects. Since 2015, they have been 700 to attend the weekly courses offered by Laborando (forge, carpentry, video motion, 3D designs, modeling, …). The success lies in several factors: a good location, evening hours, courses accessible for beginners, courses designed to fit real needs, good casting of teachers and above all courses designed as an experience. People should learn with pleasure which comes with good food, good atmosphere, personalized attention during the courses in small team and sharing between students. A review is asked to participants to identify the improvements and increase progressively the quality.

The key success which enables Laborando to attract its members and students was the good ranking in google. The website, the blog and the social networks are the perfect combinations to provide to everyone with all the information about the philosophy of the space, the courses, the memberships and the events. People should have access to want they are looking for in less than 2 clicks so all the digital communication have been designed to comply with this rule.

In short-term, Pia is planning to open new services for the members such as a map of providers recommended by the community or support for the accounting or the marketing. Partnerships should be signed with other spaces to open more courses and offer them in new areas.

A year after opening her own space, Pia reached the breakeven. The 7 annual memberships cover the fixed costs (space rental, supplies) and the incomes generated by the courses enable to cover the exceptional costs. What remains is invested to equipped and improved the space. The investment remaining to fully equipped and arrange the space is estimated to 6 more months of work and then the benefits will be used to pay her salary and to develop the services and new courses. 7 other annual memberships are available so one short-term objective will be to find new members to fully used the space and generate monthly revenues.

This fast rentability has been permitted thanks to a strategic choice: Pia decided to not buy any digital machines but to look for members who can bring their digital tool and will offer training, use and services with it (CNC, 3D printing, …). As a result, she didn’t have to invest in these machines or to hire a technical manager in charge of the security and training of users. Moreover the focused on renting the space to professionals with a long-term membership rather than offering services for the general but punctual public. Eventually, the courses offered by her team of teachers guarantee her a sustainable and complementary income. The income of each course is divided 50% between Laborando (who provides the space, the communication, the logistic, the food) and the teachers.

Technologies & processes available

3D printing CNC milling Computing & softwares Photo & video Wood working tools Traditional tools Welding

Services offered

Community center Talks & conferences Startups & projects incubation / mentoring Storing facilities Classes & workshops Coworking space Space rental

Our best practices

The inspiring things we do here to run our collaborative space

Start with a website and meetings

categories
Creating your workshop Community

What is it?

Rather than investing in a physical space, start to create your project with a website to pitch the idea and to gather the first members of your community.

In concrete terms?

In 2014, the team of Laborando didn’t have the funds either the time to open a physical space where people can to make, learn and share. As a consequence, they opened a website to pitch their idea of “co-working space where people can make and learn to do things” and to offer to people interested courses in existing co-workings. 2 years after, when they opened their first space, they have benefited from a local reputation and a good raking online to attract people.

Why it’s interesting?

An online presence is a key factor to the success of a physical space creation. It enables the funders to attract the first users in a quicker and easier way. In fact, a website, which offers articles and meetings/events, enables to:

  • gather the first members of the makerspace
  • identify the real needs of the community
  • design the future space and services adapted to the real needs
  • benefit from a good ranking on Google for people looking for a makerspace
Contact : espacio@laborando.com.ar

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