Imperial’s brand new Maker facility – at White City

On Imperial’s new White City site (about which I wrote last), in addition to the Innovation-Hub, there is to be a new £5M prototyping and innovation facility: the Invention Rooms – open to college members, industry, SMEs and local community and dedicated to supporting the next generation of investors, entrepreneurs and tech leaders.

 There is already a network of six prototyping spaces, centred around the South Kensington Campus which support the activities of the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace (‘ICAH’). They provide access to metal work, wood work, additive manufacturing and 3-D printing, electronics and robotics amongst others. Its mission is to deliver skills, resources and people to support its users in the development of new ideas and their transition to other commercialisation networks within the university.

Already with nearly 2,000 members, it is growing at a rate of 100 new members every month, drawing members from all Faculties within Imperial College i.e. Engineering, Natural Sciences, Medicine and the Business School.

This growth, coupled with increased engagement with commercial organisations – from micro companies and SMEs to OEMs – and the local community, prompted the vision for the Invention Rooms on the new campus at White Cilty. They consist of four large areas:

• a new hackspace that will extend the capabilities of the ICAH network,
• a makerspace for local community engagement,
• an expo-centre and
• a co-working space on the floor above.

The new hackspace facility at the Invention Rooms (right next to White City Tube) will lead to co-location of the full prototyping ecosystem of the college: metal work to bio-hacking to microfab to 3D printing to electronics – a  place where engineers, medics, life scientists,  mathematicians, physical scientists – people with common  interests from inside and outside the university (like  Ford’s Techshop Detroit) in device prototyping, computers,  machining, science, synthetic biology, digital art,  robotics, automation or diagnostics can meet, socialise and  collaborate.

As prototyping technologies become de-skilled these will also feed into ICAH giving its stakeholders a competitive advantage in their enterprises. The goal is to become a hub for providing such partly-deskilled tools; speeding up the rate at which researchers cross boundaries.

The Invention Rooms is a distinctive venture, both in terms of scale and ambition, within a university environment: as large is its socialising and public events area; and as large again its ideation and prototyping space and its outreach community makerspace – co-delivering impact in the local area.

These are all complemented by a hot-house facility on the floor above. By providing touch-down desking, meeting rooms and mentorship, these will further drive co-location of college members with the public, entrepreneurs, SMES and industry partners.

A new prototyping space focussing on molecular hacking that will open in the nearby Molecular Sciences Research Hub in early 2018 will make an added contribution.

As these new spaces go live, the ICAH support team will continue to grow, from ICAH fellows, to Hackers in Residence, Advanced ICAH Fellows, ICAH technicians and ICAH management – ensuring that the ICAH community will benefit from an extensive team of experts as they develop their ideas.

John Whatmore, May 2017