Lego meets Wikipedia: The Future of Housing?
Can you follow an IKEA manual? If so, you might also be able to build your own house. According to UK-based open source project WikiHouse, the key to changing the mentality around housing affordability and availability can and should be in the hands of the very people who need housing most.
WikiHouse, founded in 2013, is a collaborative online library of usable and customizable 3D models for buildings, made up entirely of interlocking parts. Components are “printed” with a computer numerical controlled (CNC) lathe and are designed to snap together using only a few tools. (You can even print wooden mallets to hammer parts together!) The smallest model WikiHouse can be framed in a single day.
The grander vision behind WikiHouse is putting development power into the hands of citizens themselves—first with buildings, and eventually with an open source model for urban design and development.
The catch? Unless you happen to have a CNC machine collecting cobwebs somewhere in your basement, you will still need to find a way to prefabricate all of the parts. So forget a communal espresso machine—maybe what the newest trendy co-working spaces need is a shared CNC fabricator.
Image: WikiHouse
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