Working, producing and trading goods and services, always has an impact on the society and on the environment. It influences directly the life of people who develop a product, who build it and deal with it, who use it and destroy it. Every man-made object interacts with many different people and makes people interact with each other. The quality of an object for me is defined by the quality of relations it invokes in its environment from sketch until disposal.
In my work as designer and artisan this is the central question I investigate and play with. Apparently working with shapes, materials and colors, but in reality focused on the people who get in touch with them. Making installations in public spaces, workshops and working with different communities gives me a privileged point of view on this questions and gives me an immediate feedback on the value of my ideas.

Patrick Hubmann
Rua Conde Alto Mearim 547, 4450-034 Matosinhos/ Portugal
mail@patrickhubmann.com +351 91 0304152

The southern England seaside town Folkestone developed thanks to the arrival of the train as a harbour town and a tourism resort. After a massive closure caused by the opening of the channel tunnel the town became interesting for commuters to London for it’s high speed connection to the capital. Without ferry connections to France a redundant railway track cuts the town into halves. This project wanted to open a discussion about the future use of this area and a reflection about it’s past. 15 years after the last train passed on these tracks, the Grand Plaza Express uses them again, and through workshops, meetings and a small ride it gives the public access to this area shut for a long time.
Photo: George Cory

A temporary installation that hosts objects collected among the population of Santa Maria da Feira/Portugal. Each object represents an individual memory of a person and is told by a short video screened at the inside of the structure. These individual pieces are mounted on small carts and are assembled by the 'machine' through ramps and its elevator in order to create a dynamic collective memory.
Photo: João Pedro Azevedo

A bike trailer with a mobile kitchen and a table that can host up to 14 persons traveled around the civil parishes of Santa Maria da Feira and invited passers-by to sit down and share their memories of the territory.
Photo: João Pedro Azevedo

The Open Cinema Program aims to re-activate ancient movie-theatres in small villages of the Italian Region of Piedmont. constructlab was called to explore the world of movies with open workshops and public screenings in order to engage new audience in the towns of Brandizzo, Almese, Trivero, Carmagnola and Dronero. The possibility of spontaneous participation promoted active membership in local cultural initiatives.

W.o.W is a workshop on wheels. Its structure, when unfolded through simple yet unexpected mechanisms, just like a toolbox, reveals a fully equipped working space. Inside, there is space for storage of tools, materials and objects; on the upper space, the structure can host people overnights. W.o.W is a temporary hub where sociality and mingling are encouraged through building, where learning low tech building techniques and material acknowledgment empower people to express their creativity.

W.o.W – the big toolbox and tiny workshop started its tour through Europe. The moving project, built on a trailer doesn’t belong anywhere, it belongs everywhere. It’s a tool to generate projects. On tour W.o.W initiates and networks projects at different locations. In this way it gives its contribution to projects of the constructLab network from Berlin to Southern Italy, and beyond… The tour leads through rural areas and focuses on citizens, towns and villages, that experience a lack of events and opportunities for creation, but on the other hand abound in participation and knowledge sharing. W.o.W activates the community with the help of tools to learn and built. It promotes collaborative work, making to generate innovation and social regeneration. The experiences it collects on the journey, it sows on its path and thus triggers a network of creative activities.

EmCaixa is micro cultural center where perspectives and desires of the surrounding community convert in an artistic object to be returned in the form of a performance. The box is like a camera. There is an audience whose look is directed and framed according to the place where it is placed.
The stage part is like the lens, which shows, filters and transforms the reality of the landscape according to the photographer's sensitivity. Unlike photography, our product is ephemeral, but with a will that remains in the collective imagination of the public. This box, besides functioning as a cultural center, space of creation and presentation, is in itself also (together with the city ​​where it is placed), scenery and scenic device that becomes and adapts to the needs of the performance and the participating community.

Opening and activation of a community center
Palagiano (Ta) Italy 2015
The first part of the project in August was the collective construction of a structure for the space in front of the building, that would transform the unused area into a public square, providing shade for people gathering, possibilities for events and performances, and that creates a new inviting facade for the center. Designing and building together had the intention to transfer skills and knowledge to the new founded community carpentry workshop ‘mezza sega’ that is situated there.
The second part in October focused on the interior spaces of the Laboratorio Urbano, providing a proper workshop, a central space for events and exhibitions and building prototypes of easy to make furniture to be produced by the community in the workshop. Laboratorio Urbano Palagiano became a space where young or unemployed people could go and test their professional skills, exchange knowledge, that would help in a future employment.
A constructLab project, Photo: Peppe Frisino

A temporary comunity museum made with collected materials from the area,
with Diana Sá, João Moreira, Manuela Castro and Vera Carmo.
Photo Rui Meireles / Porto Lazer