User:RoldanDescamps

I'm Roldan Descamps, co-founder of Mekanika, a Brussels-based company I started in 2019 with Martin Duchêne and Maxime Gravet. We design and manufacture open-source machines (CNC milling and screen printing equipment ar the moment), shipped as kits and following a strict open source philosophy (no obsolescence, extensive documentation for repair autonomy, contribution from the community). We mean to make local manufacturing accessible to artisans, designers and small producers. We've grown to about twenty employees and over two thousand users across Europe, and have received a German Design Award in 2025. We're collaborating with leading universities and fablabs in open-source hardware reasearch (TUBerlin, Waag, Grenoble INP, Fabcity Hamburg).

What drives Mekanika is a conviction I hold about craft, transparency and how things are produced. I'm deeply committed to open source not just as a business model but as a governance principle. Within the company, I've been exploring participative and horizontal organization, drawing heavily on thinkers like David Graeber, Iris Marion Young and Hartmut Rosa, whose work on resonance and acceleration shapes how I think about what meaningful work and production can look like.

Outside of Mekanika, I'm a drummer and a enthusiast jazz listener. I fell in through the UK scene via the We Out Here compilation back in 2018, followed by a deep dive into both modern jazz and older one. My favorite artists are Dorothy Ashby, Shabaka, Kelan Phil Cohran, Yussef Dayes, Jeff Parker, Nala Sinephro, Yazmin Lacey and so much more. I also have a deep love for food and cooking. I've experimented a lot of japanese fermentation (Miso, Shoyu) following learnings with Adonde, and I admire chefs like Yoshihiro Imai, Nik Sharma and Samin Nosrat for the way they think about ingredients and process.

In all of this : machines, music, food, philosophy, what holds it together is an attention to craft, to how things are made, and a belief that openness and care in production matter.