Fab Lab Miami

How do you design a home on ? You start with a cube. Little by little, that cube gets a pyramid as a roof, a cube attachment for the garage, a cube attachment for the second floor, and finally the addition of the furniture inside of the home. Once the home basics are in place, students are encouraged to expand their home concepts to reflect their dream home. But it all starts with that first cube as the home’s foundation.

Fab Lab Miami uses 3D architecture as a learning tool to teach youth participants about 3D design and digital fabrication.

Happy National STEM/STEAM Day!

Summer is over but the fun is only beginning. We kicked off the fall with Marlins Maker Day this past weekend. It was great to share the fair with fellow STEAM Coalition members and , along with new friends and , as well as all the brave souls out in the sun Saturday afternoon. Looking forward to the next maker faire!

Fab Lab Miami presented a ball maze challenge, and offering 3D printed prizes printed on site using the 3D printers.

A very special thank you goes out to .art. We’re eternally grateful for their hospitality during our summer intern celebration last week. The institution provided the interns an in-depth look at the immersive art exhibits from world-renown artists and , and even allowed the students to take a peak at the behind the scenes facility operations.

The interns learned about coding, NFTs, programming, networking, computer science, architecture and light, circuitry, IT, and even a bit of chemistry. It was a STEAM-filled afternoon. We couldn’t have chosen a better field trip to touch on such a wide variety of STEAM themes in one activity.

This summer we welcomed five interns to support summer programming. For two months, interns helped us create lesson plans, organize the lab, teach summer cohorts, and work on administrative tasks. A huge help given the explosion of programming we experienced between July and August. Of course, they also had the chance to learn about digital fabrication, coding, digital design, networking, architecture, artificial intelligence, and much more.

We sincerely thank all five interns for their time, effort, and enthusiasm.

And that’s a wrap! Our week-long STEAM programming at the .official Curious Minds’ STEM Academy at in Liberty City came to a close, but not without the students showcasing their home designs.

After searching for an open lot in Miami Dade County, students then started to design homes to fit inside that lot using and before printing their homes.

Students used 3D printers, while other students built their homes using wood panels they cut per their specifications using the cutters.

Once again, thank you to the Jasón Tapia from and from .house for enriching our programming with a professional perspective to architecture, design, artificial intelligence, digital fabrication, and the arts.

The STEAM fun continues at the Curious Minds STEM Academy . Yesterday stopped by and hosted a workshop on his latest project, Habitat. Lee has been researching and developing adaptive architectural solutions to Miami’s environmental precariousness.

Students learned of Lee’s artistic and futurist practice while also contributing to his .house initiative, an AI-generated image bank of resilient Florida dwellings ideal for a not-so-distant future based on text prompts using the MidJourney AI open beta platform.

Check out some of the imaginative and fantastical creations from our students.

If you’d like to participate and contribute a text prompt, visit .house and DM your prompt. Have fun!

This week Fab Lab Miami is taking a break from its normal programming to support the Curious Minds STEM Academy at north in Liberty City. During our week long STEAM program, students will be exposed to engineering and architecture as they construct their future home using digital fabrication tools.

We launched Monday’s lesson with the help of Jason Tapia, principal of , who utilizes fab lab tools in his architectural practice to help visualize prototypes during the design phase.

Students designed their homes on and will be using and to cut wood panels to their specifications in order to begin building their model homes. We can’t wait to see the final product. Stay tuned!

Thank you to .official and their iCARE program for paying us a visit at our makerspace. The bank is investing in STEM education in Liberty City and we’re proud to partner with them, and in the Curious Minds STEM Academy at the Carrie Meek Center at MDC College. The future seems bright!

The cohort has been focusing on social justice this summer. Today the summer camp girls visited the makerspace and engraved social justice heroes and heroines on wooden boards using the software and the engraver.

Teamwork makes the dream work. This week the cohort built robots in groups of two using the STEAM kits. We even had a chance to race the robots at the end of the session.

We had a loads of STEAM fun last week as we welcomed our first cohort of the summer, the . Their first lesson was on digital design and laser cutting using software and the cutter.

Great news for STEM programming in Liberty City. This week .official & launched the Curious Minds STEM Academy at the Carrie P. Meek Entrepreneurial Education Center.

High school students that register for the STEM Academy this summer will get the chance to earn college credit while learning about cyber security, coding, circuits, biology, digital fabrication, architecture, and much more.

Fab Lab Miami is a proud partner of Bank United’s Curious Minds STEM Academy, which will give us the chance to continue to inspire and nurture the pursuit of coursework and careers in STEAM through a maker-driven, hands-on experience with digital fabrication and STEAM activities. The future looks bright 💡.