Think|Haus

From the outside, Think|Haus looks like many of the buildings that surround it. The workshop’s interior, however, tells a different story. Half-finished robotic arms lie prone on workbenches next to numerous homemade 3D printers and flexible LED lights. A Lazzor sits in the adjoining room. Every square inch of table space is obscured by tools, scraps of material, and design plans.

“There is no average day,” founder James Arlen explains.

Think|Haus was founded five and a half years ago when the hackerspace movement took off. “This is just another facet of ‘we can do ambitious things here,’” Arlen says. Although initially located in a larger space on Niagara St, “there were problems associated with it,” Arlen admits. “There were people who would just take over large portions of the shop…and consumed about a quarter of the usable space.” The move to the shop’s current Dundurn St. location helped enhance the community feel that sets Think|Haus apart from similar but much larger groups.

The shop operates on a membership basis. For $60 a month, members have 24-hour access to the shop and can use any machine they have been trained to use. The space has a variety of tools, and Arlen is proud when he says, “We can do everything here except for welding and forging.” Non-members have the opportunity to explore Think|Haus’ features on Tuesday nights during the weekly Open Haus.

The key to Think|Haus’ success lies in its group dynamic. “Everyone is supposed to contribute to keeping the space up and running,” Arlen says. “Legally we’re not a cooperative, but there’s this idea that you cooperate.” There have been many instances of members collaborating on a project that seems “insurmountable” for a single person. “Nobody knows enough about everything, but we all have our specialty.” Arlen himself has spent over 20 years in computer securities but also knows a great deal about electronics design. Members come from a wide range of areas, from engineers to locksmiths.

Think|Haus was founded as a creative space for all types of makers, artists, and hackers. However, Arlen is quick to make the distinction that hackers are not “bad guys.” He explains “the media essentially screwed everyone over when they redefined hackers as bad guys… Hackers are people who take crap apart, figure out how it works, figure out how to make it better, put it back together, and teach everyone else how to do the same thing.”  According to Arlen, many hackers have taken up lock picking as a sport. However, he doesn’t see this as a problem. “Are we actively trying to teach people bad things? No. We’re actively trying to teach people to be aware of bad things.”

Arlen admits, “A lot of this is tied up in being a parent and teaching my kids they have their own sustainability. They can do a lot of things for themselves.” Teaching his children how to pick locks has proven to them the importance of home security. While 18 is the required age to join Think|Haus as an independent member, a number of parents bring their children and introduce them to the workshop long before they are able to join. “Kids do some of the more interesting things around here. They’re not constrained by the ‘right’ way to do it… Teaching kids to be afraid of stuff is stupid and helping them understand how it works means that they can make smart decisions about things in life.”

There are two elements of working at Think|Haus that resonate the most within Arlen. “The most rewarding part for me, ultimately, is watching so many people find personal success,” he says. “There was a kid who came in on a Tuesday night and he was having trouble at school and he was not connecting with anything or anyone, and we sat together and we built something… and that feeling of satisfaction, that something was finally in his control, was awesome for him.”

The strength of the Think|Haus community is another obvious point of pride for Arlen. He tells the story of a member who went missing and was found by fellow members in the hospital, where he was a John Doe with a substantial tumour in his head. His friends from Think|Haus took him to say goodbye to his childhood home. “It was five people from [the workshop] who ended up sitting around his bed at St. Peter’s when he died…and that doesn’t happen unless you have a cohesive community.”

While Arlen acknowledges that Think|Haus has the potential to grow, he remains undecided on whether or not a larger workspace lies in the shop’s future. “Sustainability is the most important feature,” Arlen explains, and with a member-count constantly in flux, it can be difficult to predict the future. “There are places [like Think|Haus] that have 200 or 300 members [but] they don’t function as a cohesive space anymore,” and the community aspect of the shop is clearly important to both Arlen and the members.

Think|Haus is an environment where creativity flourishes. James Arlen says that Hamilton was once known as “The Ambitious City”, and with his initiative, he has succeeded in reigniting the city’s creative spark.