” WikiHouse is the ultimate self-assembly kit: an open-source construction set that lets you build your own home from online templates. Download the plans, source the parts and get building — your new home can be up by dusk. The designs require no formal skills: assembly is a 3D jigsaw, with numbered pieces that slot together and are hammered down. And there’s no need for power tools — even the included mallet is computer numerical control (CNC) milled.
Alastair Parvin, architect at 00:/, the London design practice behind WikiHouse, says the logic of economist John Maynard Keynes (“it’s easier to ship recipes than cakes and biscuits”) applies to these homes. By putting design into the public domain, WikiHouse hopes to incite real change. “That’s the ambition of the project,” says Parvin. “To lower the threshold to making your own house.”
It is based on 10 Design Principles:
- ‘Be lazy like a fox’. Rather than solving problems from scratch, adapt other people’s solutions, and then give them credit. Linus Torvalds thought of this phrase.
- Design for materials and components which are reasonably cheap to buy, low-carbon and fully recyclable or biodegradable.
- Design is disruptive when it lowers the threshold. Design structures which can be assembled with minimal formal skill or training, and without the use of power tools.
- WikiHouses should be capable of being habitable throughout the year, and as efficient as possible in the use of energy and water. We are working to get to the first habitable WikiHouse prototype built in the near future.
- Design in such a way as to offer maximum provision for the safety, security and health (both mental and physical) of the users at all stages of the structure’s life.
- As a general rule, design for the climate, culture, economy and legal / planning framework in which you live, and you know best. Others will then be able to adapt the design to suit their environment.
- Share your work as much and as openly as possible, it might come back better. At very least you’ll have contributed to solving a common problem. All components on WikiHouse are shared under a creative commons license, and authors are always attributed.
- “It is easier to ship recipes than cakes and biscuits” – John Maynard Keynes
- Design to dismantle. The easier it is to dismantle structures or replace individual parts, the better.
- Design for mistakes. Try to design components which either make it impossible for the assembler to get it wrong or are designed in such a way that it doesn’t matter if they do.
Below some image of the house in the London studio 00:/
Via Wired
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