Artisan's Asylum

Summary

Artisan's Asylum is a non-profit community workshop in Allston, Massachusetts.[1] Artisan's Asylum was founded in 2010 by an engineer, an artist, and friends who needed an affordable place to build and make things. Artisan's was the first makerspace to incorporate in the U.S. in 2012. Today, it holds 40,000 square feet of fabrication space.

Artisans Asylum in 2017.

Artisan's Asylum hosts over 430 members, 160 studios, and 15 workshops. Shops include woodworking, welding, bicycle maintenance and repair, machining, electronics and robotics, jewelry, digital fabrication, a digital photo studio, fiber arts, casting, laser cutting, CNC machines, prop shop, and design lab. The Asylum hosts 30-40 public classes each month, providing hands-on tool training and skill-building courses.[2] As of 2013, the Asylum housed 40 or 50 small manufacturing companies, and raised the number of manufacturing firms in nearby Somerville by 50%. The Asylum is credited with attracting the greentech incubator Greentown Labs to Somerville and contributing to the city's creative economy.[3]

In 2017, Artisan's Asylum gained some notoriety on the internet for hosting MegaBots Inc. as that company built their 4.9 meter tall robot fighter, EaglePrime. On October 17, EaglePrime defeated Kuratas, a 6.5 ton battle robot built by Japanese company Suidobashi. The fight was hosted in an abandoned steel mill in Japan, and was live streamed on Twitch.[4][5]

References edit

  1. ^ "About Us". artisansasylum.com. Archived from the original on 2020-08-03. Retrieved 2017-12-20.
  2. ^ Flaherty, Joseph (August 9, 2012). "Building Stompy the Giant Robot Inside the World's Biggest Hackerspace". Wired. Condé Nast.
  3. ^ Pierce, Kathleen (February 21, 2013). "In Somerville and Lowell, do-it-yourselfers making it work". The Boston Globe. Boston Globe Media Partners.
  4. ^ Chardronnet, Ewen (October 17, 2017). "Artisan's Asylum, the cradle of giant robots in Boston". Makery. Digital Art International.
  5. ^ Burton, Bonnie (October 17, 2017). "US beats Japan in ultimate giant-robot smackdown". CNET. CBS Interactive.

External links edit

  • Official website