About me

Hey, my name is Lars Mattern.

I’m the Lab Manager of the DesignLab at Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Essen and I’m also work in the open 3D-Printing Laboratory at the Future-Campus.Ruhr in Essen.

I would call myself as a maker, but not as a creator, so let’s see, what will be happen in the upcoming weeks.

How comes :

From 2003, I worked almost 15 years in different IT areas, E.g. in administration, integration and also service and support.

In 2015 I wrote my first tutorial about how to build an ambilight with standard led strips.
Than, in 2016, I’ve bought my first 3D-Printer kit. It was an Ultimaker clone called CL-260. If I knew, what to expect, I probably wouldn’t have bought it. :-D
But I would say, without buying that kit, I wouldn’t be a part of the FabAcademy, this year.
The machine didn’t work probably and I put it in a corner. After almost one year, I started again, trying to bring the printer back to life and did some research.
At this point I didn’t knew, that Fablabs exist and that the things I did, has a name and there is a community around that. During my researches, how to optimize the 3D-Printer, I red the names Fablab and Maker-Space, for the first time.
It was funny, because I had the epiphany “Hey! That what I did in the past, has a name ! These are Maker-Projects !”

With my new knowledge :-D , I started to search Fablabs and Maker-Spaces near to me and the first one I found, was the HRW-Fablab. In 2017, it was a Wednesday afternoon, I visited the HRW-Fablab and it was Jonas van Hagen, who shows me the lab and gave me the security instructions.
During my time in the HRW-Fablab, I heard the first time from the FabAcademy.
Sadly, the lab was only open every second Wednesday and after some Wednesday afternoons, it was not enough anymore, for me.
So I searched again and found the 3D Druckzentrum Ruhr (today Future-Campus.Ruhr) I knocked at Peter E. Petersen’s door and he welcomed me to a place, where Art and Future Tech come together. After a short talk, I got a key and had 24/7 access to that great space. STRIKE !!! :-D

I was so excited by that experience that I knew from that point on that I didn’t want to work in the IT-Area anymore. Through Peter’s engagement, he has helped me to continue to pursue my goals and I helped him by managing the open 3D-Printing Laboratory.

One day it was so far, I got a call from Aleksandra Konopek. She knew me from the HRW-Fablab and knew I was looking for a job outside my Administrator’s life.
So she told me, that the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Essen is looking for a DesignLab Manager.

That’s the story in short.

Fun fact: the CL-260 doesn’t work properly until today :-D