If you have some spare time this weekend, you could start building your own house!
WikiHouse is an online, open-source construction kit that lets people design and build a new home in just 24 hours. It definitely sounds a bit weird, but this is a serious new ‘open-source design’ concept released as a plugin for Google Sketchup. Designers tap Google SketchUp, a cinchy 3-D modeling program, to design and edit building templates. The templates are made available to the masses through Creative Commons. The user then downloads a pattern, cuts out the parts in plywood using a CNC milling machine, and starts building away.
“Its aim is to make it possible for almost anyone, regardless of their formal skills, to freely download and build structures which are affordable and suited to their needs,” WikiHouse’s website says.
Sounds promising. And if the designs are really as easy and inexpensive as the site says, you could see this sort of insta-architecture having astronomical value in poor, rural areas and developing countries. Open-source blueprints are already a huge aspect of nonprofit architecture.
The official debut, and construction of the first complete WikiHouse, is scheduled for the Gwangu Design Biennale in South Korea during September and October this year.
From WikiHouse:
Imagine taking your Google Sketchup creation for a house and having it milled out and assembled all within 24 hours. WikiHouse, an Open Community project that puts you in the driver’s seat of design and construction has recently unleashed the opportunity for anyone to realize their own vision of architecture.
You can use your own design and enhance it with other components via the open online community. Once your design is completed, the model is used by WikiHouse to create drawings, which are ready to be CNC milled out of 18mm locally sourced plywood. The pieces can be easily assembled with no power tools, with ribs spaced at 600mm and lateral stabilizers to ensure structural integrity.
The entire process requires no formal knowledge of construction and is extremely adaptable for your own personal customization
Photographs: WikiHouse.cc
References: WikiHouse.cc, Prote.in
Read more: International Business Times
