Membership count in our Hacklab has been growing at a rapid rate. It’s great to have a lot of people at the club evenings on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Nevertheless, the space can become a little crowded and there has been a growing need to do metal, wood and other mechanical work at the lab. We would love to have a dedicated area for heavier work that might create noise and dust.

We have identified the need to find a bigger Hacklab space and have kept our eyes open in case something pops up, and it now has.

The Kortepohja student village invited us to have a look at their DDR-style  MNOP building. The space offered has been used as a gym and consists of four rooms, the largest being 54 m². One of the rooms has access to the street level outside door and could be used for messier projects and fixing bicycles for example. There is a kitchen and possibilities to store all our treasures.

The total space at the DDR building is more than 100 m². It seems very functional and all the rooms are conveniently next to each other. The student village representatives are interested in renting the space for the Hacklab. One possibility could be to punch a door through the adjacent wall of two of the rooms to open the area up even more. Another idea was to share the bomb shelter space with JYY and use it as storage. When the Hacklab grows it could then rent the whole bomb shelter from JYY.

The overall feel of the DDR space was very good. Moving to a bigger space would allow us to have dedicated space for various machines to work with materials such as wood and metal. The new space would also provide more desk area for projects and socialising. There was also talk about a Hacklab sauna. 🙂 Hopefully soon we will have a spacious state of the art lab for our current and future members to enjoy. Fingers crossed!