From Flowers to Gears:

How Super FabLab Kerala Brings Onam Culture to Life Through Digital Fabrication

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What happens when a centuries-old tradition meets gears, linkages, digital fabrication and a community of makers? At Super FabLab Kerala, a Pookalam doesn’t just sit on the floor—it moves.

For Onam 2026, the team at Super FabLab Kerala, powered by Kerala Startup Mission, continued an experiment that began last year: exploring how digital fabrication can become a medium for expressing local culture and tradition. The result is a mechanical Pookalam—a traditional Onam floral arrangement reimagined as a kinetic installation that moves and transforms.

The Fab Lab Kerala Team with the digital Fabrication Pookalam

From a rotating Pookalam to a transforming one

The journey began in 2025, when the first cohort of the Creator Residency Fellowship (CRF) created a rotating Pookalam. This year, the team wanted to push the idea further. Instead of simply rotating, could a Pookalam actually open, close and transform like a flower?

That question led to this year’s design, built around a Hoberman mechanism—a system of interconnected links that expands and contracts, creating a movement reminiscent of a flower opening and closing. But while the mechanism is new, the essence of the Pookalam remains familiar: flowers, participation, creativity and the collective experience of making something together.

Where culture meets the FabLab

The project brought together art, culture, mechanical design, engineering and digital fabrication. The Creator Residency Fellows developed the creative direction and overall design, while Sreyas George led the mechanism design and engineering behind the movement. The wide Super FabLab team contributed to fabrication, assembly and the many iterations needed to bring the idea to life.

Importantly, the Pookalam wasn’t simply designed digitally and sent away for manufacturing. It was designed, prototyped and fabricated within Super FabLab Kerala, using the capabilities of the lab. Plywood components were cut using the waterjet cutter, intricate petal and gear designs were produced on the Zünd digital flatbed cutter, and mechanical components were 3D printed. The wider FabLab community then came together to assemble the pieces and make the Pookalam move.

Behind the project was also a wider community of makers, including Fabacademy graduates and members of the FabLab ecosystem, bringing their experience, fabrication skills and knowledge into the process. This collaborative approach is perhaps as important as the mechanism itself.

Fabacademy in practice

In many ways, the mechanical Pookalam represents what the Fabacademy and global Fab Lab network are about: learning by doing, sharing knowledge, experimenting across disciplines, and combining digital fabrication with the knowledge and culture of the communities around us. Here, technology isn’t being used simply to demonstrate what a machine can do. Instead, a familiar cultural practice becomes a starting point for experimentation.

• A traditional Pookalam becomes a mechanical system.
• Flowers become moving elements.
• Patterns become gears and linkages.

And a cultural celebration becomes an opportunity to learn, design and make together. This is what makes the project meaningful. Digital fabrication isn’t replacing tradition—it is providing a new way to experience, reinterpret and celebrate it.

Making technology approachable

A Pookalam is instantly recognizable to people across Kerala. By connecting something so familiar with mechanisms, digital fabrication and creative engineering, the team hopes to make technology feel more approachable to people who may never have interacted with a FabLab before. The idea is simple: if people can see advanced technology being used to create something rooted in their own culture, technology becomes something they can imagine themselves exploring and creating with. The project is part of the Creator Residency Fellowship, supported through CSR funding from SFO Technologies, which enables young creators to experiment, learn and build using the resources of the FabLab.

A tradition of making, evolving

What began as an experiment in 2025 is now becoming a continuing exploration.

• 2025: A rotating Pookalam.
• 2026: A transforming mechanical Pookalam.

Each year, the team is exploring a new way to connect digital fabrication, art, culture and community. This year’s Pookalam has also reached well beyond the FabLab itself, spreading through Malayalee communities on social media and attracting attention from national media. That visibility has helped introduce more people to the work of Super FabLab Kerala, the Creator Residency Fellowship, Fabacademy and the wider FabLab ecosystem in Kerala. For the team, however, the most important outcome isn’t simply the attention.

It is the opportunity to show that technology can be rooted in culture, and culture can inspire technology.

From flowers to gears, the Pookalam continues to evolve—while remaining rooted in the spirit of Onam. And perhaps that is the beauty of making in a FabLab: when local culture meets an open community of makers, even a familiar tradition can become a starting point for something entirely new.

Video Documentation

Mechanical Pookalam – Video 1

Mechanical Pookalam(BTS) — Video 2

Content provided by Fab Lab Kerala