Artisans Asylum
 | This article contains promotional content. (July 2020) |
Artisan's Asylum is a non-profit community workshop in Somerville, 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. The Asylum was the first makerspace to incorporate in the U.S. in 2012 and today is a 40,000 square feet fabrication wonderland. Once believed to be the largest makerspace in the world, the Asylum remains among the largest, home to more than 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 skills building courses.[2] As of 2013, the Asylum housed 40 or 50 small manufacturing companies, and raised the number of manufacturing firms in Somerville by 50%. The Asylum is credited with attracting the greentech incubator Greentown Labs to Somerville and contributing substantially to the value of the creative economy in Somerville.[3]
In 2017, Artisan's Asylum was featured around the web for hosting MegaBots Inc. as they built their 4.9 meter tall robot fighter, EaglePrime. On October 17, EaglePrime defeated Kuratas, a 6.5 ton battle robot build by Japanese company Suidobashi. The fight was hosted in an abandoned steel mill in Japan, and was live streamed on Twitch.[4][5]
References
- ^ "About Us". artisansasylum.com.
- ^ Flaherty, Joseph (August 9, 2012). "Building Stompy the Giant Robot Inside the World's Biggest Hackerspace". Wired. Condé Nast.
- ^ Pierce, Kathleen (February 21, 2013). "In Somerville and Lowell, do-it-yourselfers making it work". The Boston Globe. Boston Globe Media Partners.
- ^ Chardronnet, Ewen (October 17, 2017). "Artisan's Asylum, the cradle of giant robots in Boston". Makery. Digital Art International.
- ^ Burton, Bonnie (October 17, 2017). "US beats Japan in ultimate giant-robot smackdown". CNET. CBS Interactive.
