An open source kit for designing and building a home

The brainchild of London design firm 00:/ along with Espians and Momentum Engineering, WikiHouse is an open source construction set that aims “to allow anyone to design, download, and ‘print’ CNC-milled houses and components, which can be assembled with minimal formal skill or training”. Included on the site are a series of house and component designs created by participants around the world and shared under a Creative Commons license. Any of these can be downloaded and modified using Google SketchUp software before WikiHouse generates a complete set of corresponding milling drawings. The drawings can then be used by a computer numerical control (CNC) cutter to create the actual parts of the house from locally sourced plywood. The user then can assemble the house without any power tools, and WikiHouse claims the result can be made weathertight using cladding, insulation, damp-proof membranes and windows.

WikiHouse is currently “an experiment in its early stages” still in need of prototyping and further development, its creators say; “all the information shared on WikiHouse.cc is offered as an open invitation to collaborators and co-developers who are interested in putting open source solutions to these problems in the public domain."

Source: springwise.comAdded: 5 October 2011