The course for de-escalation

Heading towards the Cornwall coast, on the port of Concarneau. It is here, in the Explore fund base that the Low Tech Lab has set up. Behind the door of the room is an unusual workshop where it is possible to observe dozens of prototypes: several solar ovens, a vermicomposter, or an entire ceramic water filter collection. These objects have only one thing in common: they are so-called “low-tech” tools, manufactured with few resources and reproducible as easily as possible. On site, the role of the Low-Tech Lab is not to develop such solutions, but to bring them together, study them, and possibly improve them. Ultimately, the goal is to edit tutorials so that these tools can be reproduced easily, and disseminated to as many people as possible.

On site, we were welcomed by Guénolé Conrad, project coordinator, who tells us about the genesis of this initiative: “The history of the Low-tech lab is closely linked to world of maritime shipping. It all started in 2010, when Corentin de Chatelperron, the founder, returned from a mission in Bangladesh with the project of creating a sailboat from burlap, a material that is much less polluting and energy-consuming than the fibreglass that it replaces.” The ship in question is called the Gold of Bengal and set off in 2011 in the Bay of Bengal with the aim of sailing for 6 months to discover new technical solutions, while surviving on board thanks to low-tech: simple, inexpensive and energy-efficient systems. According to Guénolé Conrad, it was during this expedition that the contours of the Low-Tech Lab were drawn: “During their stopovers, they discovered that the lack of resources of certain populations created a new form of engineering”.

Two lessons emerge from this journey: While the Bengal region alone contains so many low-tech innovations, the rest of the world is certainly full of thousands of other interesting devices. Second, each of these solutions could meet the needs of other populations, but without dissemination, these inventions remain unknown. As soon as they returned, the team was convinced: lots of solutions useful to both humans and the planet await to be discovered, valued and shared. In 2013, she therefore decided to create the Gold of Bengal association (later renamed Low-tech lab) to carry out her research and experimentation projects.

If these famous inventions have not been disseminated over time, they will not come out of hiding following the opening of a Breton association, you will have to go and look for them! In 2013, the Low-Tech Lab moved into the base of the Explore fund to build the Nomad of the Seas, a catamaran intended to travel the oceans in search of innovative low-tech solutions. Guénolé Conrad recounts: “After long months of identifying potential sources of solutions of interest to go and observe, the nomad of the seas started in 2016. The expedition was supposed to last 3 years, but given the number of projects we discovered, it finally lasted 6 years.”

After having stored so many concepts, projects, and prototypes, you need to be able to distribute them as widely as possible. “To make each solution reproducible, we have launched an open-source platform that includes more than 180 tutorials to reproduce these devices from just about anywhere “declares Guénolé Conrad “it did not exist at all until now”. To disseminate this large database, the association is multiplying approaches: “We have established major media partnerships, launched emailing campaigns with NGOs working in the field and in recent years, we have been working a lot on social networks, in particular with Facebook groups, in particular with Facebook groups, which are good places for exchange for this kind of solutions”.

At the local level, the low-tech philosophy seems to have seduced the region. In 2020, an operation called “The Low-tech Lab Investigations” was launched in order to imagine a socio-economic and legal model favorable to the implementation of low-tech at the collective level. Thanks to the support of ADEME, the Brittany region and the Concarneau Cornouaille agglomération, this operation was able to go from being an investigation to that of an experiment. Guénolé Conrad says: “For 18 months, we are conducting an experiment in what could be a low-tech region, by supporting twenty voluntary structures to work on common problems.” For each structure, the objective is multiple: reduction of the environmental footprint, reduction of costs and improvement of working conditions.

At the crossroads of engineering and adventure, the Low Tech Lab leads its projects out of the desire to apply to itself the change it wants to see for the world. In recent years, in France or abroad, the association has been developing its network in order to open local branches. Ultimately, one of the objectives of the Low-Tech Lab is to deploy a network in different territories, to further optimize the circulation of the low-tech philosophy.