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Wikihouse: Open-Source Houses

• wdb 3y ago
  Not sure if I would trust a UK initiative for housing. My experience of the build quality here isn't great
• ulwtekwcuhwj 3y ago
  [dead]
• leashless 3y ago
  So I'm the hexayurt guy -- http://hexayurt.com http://hexayurt.com and http://appropedia.org/hexayurt http://appropedia.org/hexayurt We've been at this FOSS housing thing for 20 years, aiming for upgradable shelters for climate refugees rather than middle class housing. I've known the wikihouse folks from before the beginning and (frankly) I've always found the to be predatory jerks. Wikihouse came out of a potential collaboration between that team and the hexayurt project. We spent quite a bit of time discussing doing an FOSS house together, then they cut me out of the deal and six months later launched wikihouse. Never have I been more grateful that somebody ignored every bit of advice that I gave them. Nothing of our thinking is in this bloody thing. Fortunately. The core problem with wikihouse is that *it is designed to get grant funding* not to be buildable. The architecture group behind it is a grant farming operation with a rumoured tendency to implementing ideas that are very close to (but not exact copies of) things which are around in the ecosystem. So they took a good look at the hexayurt, ignored everything about it which made it practical (uses standard 4x8s, uses widely available fasteners like deck screws or aluminium tape), and then shipped something which they knew was never going to be economic to build but hit the grant funding sweet spot: CNC machines, parametric design, and so on. That's why it looks this way. Like any technology which is designed to live on grand funding practicality has never been the point. The point is that universities etc. can noodle around with it, learn from it, get some ideas tested, make a contribution, and then move on. Architecture has a constant need for things to design and things to do. Architecture for Humanity used to have a web site which collected together hundreds of designs for emergency shelter and basically it was just a place for students to publish impractical designs because they had to be published somewhere. No harm in it as long as nobody expects it to be buildable and fortunately that mistake was not made: theory stayed theory. Hexayurt Project has never been incorporated, and never taken grant funding. Once or twice people have paid me as an engineer to work on specific projects, but I make a living as a tech CEO. Many thousands of builders for Burning Man, and a ton of genuine grass roots innovation on multiple fronts. It is, by any standards, a pretty good open source project with a lot of contributors and a lot of users. What it isn't yet is a refugee shelter. To turn the "well proven at Burning Man" design into something that can be built at scale to cushion climate refugees and other displaced people is going to require a serious investment from somebody in testing in a range of environments, and refining the designs particularly when it comes to flooring and variants like spraying the shelters with shotcrete to make them permanent where needed. https://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_project/Master_List_of_Designs https://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_project/Master_List_of_D... Donor driven aid is a huge problem. Lack of testing regimes for new shelter technology is a huge problem. There is a total revolution in open source architecture coming but nobody seems to know how best to get it started. Neither one of these projects is it. Not yet. Roll on the day.
• throwaway4aday 3y ago
  The best form of open source houses are free and complete framing plans with material and cut lists and detailed instructions that don't assume the builder is a professional. Add some guides on exterior and interior finishing, basic plumbing and electrical and walk-throughs on how to obtain permitting and being your own general contractor and you'd have something genuinely useful for everyone.
• unixhero 3y ago
  I hope the site uses metric
• monkeydust 3y ago
  I remember meeting one of the founders to see if this could help with a project I had 5 years back. Was a great concept and I wanted to buy into it but the costs were high versus a custom build which would give me a better product for my needs. Glad they are still going but not that many projects on their site.
• hk__2 3y ago
  Just like yesterday [1] I’m confused by that name: what’s the "wiki" part in Wikihouse? Anybody can modify your house? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38915999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38915999
  • houbkneghtes 3y ago
    [dead]
  • notahacker 3y ago
    > Anybody can modify your house? I think that would be more fun as an art installation than a home. Comments from the neighbours on the edit page would be wild! But seriously, it looks like they're open sourcing their block designs to allow people to modify them, and any third-party with suitable CNC machining equipment to create them. Whether that's a Wiki is another question...
  • lainga 3y ago
    1. (stative) hasten, speed up. 2. (stative) be swift, speedy, quick. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wiki#Hawaiian https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wiki#Hawaiian
    • hk__2 3y ago
      In Hawaiian yes, but not in English.
    • blowski 3y ago
      That begs the question, in what way are they speeding it up?
      • renewiltord 3y ago
        Through standardized base design that you can modify. In the same way that having the source code for vendor software often speeds up software development.
• whatshisface 3y ago
  This costs about twice as much as an existing modular home even if you count the labor as free.
  • stevenAthompson 3y ago
    Is it twice as good?
    • whatshisface 3y ago
      It depends how much you value the carbon neutrality and the dark matter of real estate, the implication that you're living in a trendy new building not something that was trucked on site from a factory.
• eruci 3y ago
  One thing caught my attention. Cost: £2,540 - £2,950 per m².
  • renewiltord 3y ago
    That's interesting, for sure. Modular homes in affordable areas of the US are $1k/m²
• j-a-a-p 3y ago
  Great idea, to design a house nowadays means you need to do a lot more mandatory calculations. For example a wooden beam between insulation has to be calculated, where a few years ago we could pretend they did not exist. Builders are now switching to some sort of engineered beams (two square beams connected with board). To offer this work in the public domain could reduce the cost significantly. However, watching the video on the front page makes me wonder what code they are following. I can't imagine there is any country where you still can build with such low ceilings. It makes me wonder if you actually then save money using this approach when you still have to pay the full fees for your architect?
  • benrutter 3y ago
    Looks mostly UK based from the projects section.
    • gpm 3y ago
      Also if you scroll down on the main page WikiHouse is a non-profit registered in England & Wales, and their "sponsors and partners" are very dominated by UK organizations.
• ramesh31 3y ago
  Why has this post dominated the top page for the last 18 hours? Reeks of astroturfing to me.
• apapapa 3y ago
  At the county level, you can download plans of pre-fab homes and sheds that were already approved/reviewed by an engineer... I got thousands of shed plans for free when I built mine
• bastardoperator 3y ago
  This looks cool, I'm just wondering if something like this would pass a building inspection in the US?
  • drusepth 3y ago
    I would hope the open-source nature of it would mean the designs would evolve until they would pass a building inspection in the US, but I also know nothing about building inspections in the US.
  • gpm 3y ago
    They claim "If your project is in the UK, USA or Netherlands, we can connect you with a WikiHouse structural engineer" [1], so probably? [1] Step 3 here: https://www.wikihouse.cc/process https://www.wikihouse.cc/process
• woah 3y ago
  Seems pretty expensive to make everything out of pure plywood. Does anyone have a sense of how cost compares to 2x4's plus drywall? I assume either construction method will need exterior cladding and insulation.
  • favorited 3y ago
    When I choose a concrete slab foundation, their price estimate tool gives me a range of £NaN - £NaN. Representing currency as a floating-point value strikes again.
    • actionfromafar 3y ago
      Typical Javascript strikes again?
    • cpursley 3y ago
      There's a lesson here: Lay your foundation with strong types.
      • bawolff 3y ago
        What type are you supposed to use to represent total cost when spending infinite money for 0 days?
        • cpursley 3y ago
          It seems the Romans took their concrete type secrets to the grave.
          • 2toxic 3y ago
            https://www.archdaily.com/875212/scientists-uncover-the-chemical-secret-behind-roman-self-healing-underwater-concrete https://www.archdaily.com/875212/scientists-uncover-the-chem... :)
          • cyberax 3y ago
• helsinki 3y ago
  So, $1M USD for a 1200 sqft DIY house? No, thanks.
  • brokensegue 3y ago
    did you maybe type 1200 square meters? i'm not getting that price at https://www.wikihouse.cc/cost https://www.wikihouse.cc/cost
  • uncleshelby 3y ago
    The most expensive configuration I can find for that size (111 sq m) is 327,000 GBP on the cost estimator: https://www.wikihouse.cc/cost https://www.wikihouse.cc/cost Maybe you put in 1200 sq m instead of converting from sq ft?
  • KomoD 3y ago
    Where are you getting that number from?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• cpursley 3y ago
  This is cool, but it's not carbon free if you have to drive to it. Also, it would be nice to see this technique for multifamily, would be a big improvement to how they build apartments in the US.
• Waterluvian 3y ago
  They need to sell on the longevity and robustness of these homes. If the houses are crap, this is going to be an incredibly wasteful project no matter how many environmentally friendly indicators they point to.
  • ggm 3y ago
    Brad Pitt, New Orleans. $20m settlement. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That said, Japan treats 1 storey dwellings as single-lifetime and have a different view on the ephemeral value of a house.
  • eightysixfour 3y ago
    There is at least some reason to believe we should make some types of buildings less robust. While there are many beautiful old homes, there is a bit of a bias when we think of older homes towards ones that have been kept up to date or remodeled many times in their lives. A large percentage of homes don’t go through this process and become blight. Japanese houses depreciate over a ~30 year cycle where, at the end of that cycle, the only value left is in the land and the home is demolished and rebuilt. If you can use highly recyclable materials, this would encourage more adaptable cities where the housing is more easily adjusted for the needs of the people at the time. Density can go up or down over the course of these long cycles. The other approach is to build simplified floor plans which are highly robust but adaptable to maximize reusability - like the two column, three row warehouse layout which can be be adapted for almost any use case. This is my issue with builders like Icon, who are making 3d printed cement walled homes. Homes that last a long time get adapted many times in their life span, and these structures don’t really enable the growth and adaptation we see from buildings that are useful for many decades.
    • jacknews 3y ago
      I agree, and buildings need to be easily reconfigurable too. I love the idea of modular buildings, but this doesn't quite seem to fit. The materials don't seem ideal for the wet climate, the manufacturing process seems expensive; either you buy or rent a cnc, or have panels manufactured 'locally' then trucked. And the fact that it's precision cnc suggests this is really not modular at all, but custom designed. Steel frame, and panels in standard sizes, eg steel sip, or home-poured foam-concrete, would be cheap, reusable/recycleable, modular etc. Maybe ugly too, but then mount a nice wood, stone-veneer, or enamel rain screen/siding, and interior paneling.
• matthewfcarlson 3y ago
  I love the idea of this. My wife and I watch a decent amount of Grand Designs are there are a few houses that experiment with the concept of cnc-cut block based assembly. I intend to build something like it someday (in the US, so it might be harder to find a manufacturer). One thing that strikes me as at odds is that they tout their reusability as well as the customization aspect of the block. It’s cnc cut so they’re super accurate, but how would you reuse it in a different project? It’s like saying you can reuse puzzle pieces in a different puzzle. The shape may match but they won’t fit together.
  • doctoboggan 3y ago
    My guess is by "reusable" the mean "reconfigurable", as you can presumably reuse at least some of the blocks when rebuilding or changing your house.
  • dj_gitmo 3y ago
    > I intend to build something like it someday (in the US, so it might be harder to find a manufacturer). Its seems like every episode of Grand Design does include an almost spiritual journey to a glue-lam pre-fabricated wood factory in Germany. I’m not sure that stuff is as easy to get over here. > how would you reuse it in a different project? The blocks are standard sizes so you can reuse them like legos.
    • mglz 3y ago
      > Its seems like every episode of Grand Design does include an almost spiritual journey to a glue-lam pre-fabricated wood factory in Germany. This is really weird to me because nobody builds like that here. Brick and concrete rule supreme and people living in wooden houses are seen as old hippies who cuddle with termites.
      • PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        There's a misunderstanding here. Glue-lams are not used for walls, they are used for floor support. While a lot of multi-unit concrete residential construction in Germany uses concrete for the floor without supports), for single family houses there it is still relatively common to span rooms with beams to create floor support. This is also true for earthen buildings, which are remarkably popular (on a per-capita basis) in Germany. I say this as a US resident in New Mexico, where it is hard to imagine a place (Germany) less likely to use variants on the same best-practices as housing we build here.
• chubot 3y ago
  Hm I’d like a house where everything is as easy to assemble / repair / replace as IKEA furniture, and where you can run cables, and install builtins
  • dubcanada 3y ago
    Modern glulam buildings (or if you are in EU gablok could work) or masonry, pluggable plumbing and electrical (see Swedish prefabs, they use a pluggable electrical so you plug one wall into the other, wiring is embedded at factory), metal SIPs roofing. You can get pretty close to this with current materials.
    • bityard 3y ago
      > pluggable plumbing and electrical That's pretty interesting and while I sincerely hope it works as advertised, what is the repair process when (not if) the connections inside the wall fail? As the owner of multiple homes, a part of me is very skeptical that those connections will last for decades untouched. In the US, code does not allow for splices and connections inside walls, period. In a pre-fab, I would like to see all of the cabling run inside tubes so that I can fix/add/replace easily myself in many years down the road. This is prohibitively expensive for residential mains wiring but not terribly unusual for low-voltage stuff like coax and ethernet that the homeowner can do herself.
      • dubcanada 3y ago
        All cabling is in conduit, so if it fails you either fix the gang box if that is where it failed normally as you do in US. If the wire fails you replace it by pulling it through the conduit and fishing in a new one. It's actually a fairly decent setup compared to our standards. They also typically use a installation layer, which is a furring wall where they run these cables, meaning you don't need to mess with vapour barrier.
        • 2toxic 3y ago
          how is pluggable electric in conduit is going to work in prefabbed walls? you pull all wires through preinstalled conduit during wall placement?
• MostlyStable 3y ago
  I'd like a better idea of what the "basic, medium, high" fit and finish options mean. Clicking around various links on the site didn't seem to talk about it anywhere else besides the cost estimator.
  • foota 3y ago
    I don't think fit and finish is provided by them, I think it's a general estimate.
• primitivesuave 3y ago
  If you live in California, you can potentially build one of these as an ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit). Local agencies are required to approve an ADU within 60 days, and recent state bills (AB 976, 434, 1033, and 2221) make it easier to build/sell/rent ADUs on your property. You'll have to wait until 2025 before every locality is forced to have a process for pre-approved ADU plans (at which time you could potentially have an "open-source permit" to construct one of these very quickly).
  • sib 3y ago
    Surprisingly enough, Los Angeles is actually ahead of this timeline and rolled out a program more than a year ago to develop pre-approved ADU plans with private architecture firms. As of now, there are about 65 standardized plans that have been approved, ranging from ~300 ft^2 (28 m^2) to 1,200 ft^2 (110 m^2). https://www.ladbs.org/adu/standard-plan-program/approved-standard-plans https://www.ladbs.org/adu/standard-plan-program/approved-sta...
  • pas 3y ago
    required to approve or required to decide, and they can reject? is the approval criteria checking mechanistic? (ie. every criteria is quantified and "objective"?)
    • kuchenbecker 3y ago
      > ADUs subject to State ADU Law must be considered, approved, and permitted ministerially, without discretionary action. https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/ADUHandbookUpdate.pdf https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/ADUHandbo...
      • pas 3y ago
        So their work is to check if it's conforms to state ADU law?
        • sib 3y ago
• quantum_state 3y ago
  This is fantastic!
• sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
  There is a pretty cool project for a complete open source village: -https://www.opensourceecology.org/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/ Supposed to be all the machines you need to supply a whole village, made from low cost basic materials. I think it’s from 2014 not sure if it’s still being worked on or if anyone actually has used the blueprints in a real world scenario.
  • trompetenaccoun 3y ago
    Interesting but I'm highly suspicious of his claim that industrial machines like tractors are planned for obsolescence. From those who operate such machines I've heard the exact opposite.
  • westurner 3y ago
    TIL about The Liberator: The world's first open source compressed earth brick press. https://www.opensourceecology.org/back-to-compressed-earth-blocks/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/back-to-compressed-earth-b... A multiple-CEB unit that makes interlocking blocks that don't require mortar could build on work from this project. Add'l notes on CEB, Algae, Sargassum, Hemp in the 2024 International and US Residential Building Code, LEGO-like Hempcrete block: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37693225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37693225 FWIU Round homes fare best in windstorms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37175721#37188180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37175721#37188180 And curvy half walls one brick wide don't fall down [CEB] "Crinkle crankle wall" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinkle_crankle_wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinkle_crankle_wall
    • culebron21 3y ago
      > Round homes fare best in windstorms Yes, it's about 4x less drag. That's why nomads have round yurts.
    • orthoxerox 3y ago
      > A multiple-CEB unit that makes interlocking blocks that don't require mortar could build on work from this project. They have a page about interlocking blocks and according to it, they are simply too expensive, as you need a higher share of cement in blocks to stabilize them.
• shimonabi 3y ago
  The walls are the least expensive part of building a house.
  • 77pt77 3y ago
    What is the most expensive? The land? Permits? Appliances?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • maxwell 3y ago
      Land is only worth what you can build on it. The buildable site was 7% of new single-family costs in 2022 in the U.S., including permits, inspections, design, etc. Construction costs (labor + materials) were 61%, with interior finishes 24% of construction costs, framing 20%, and major systems 18%. Appliances were under 2%. Margin was 10%. https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/news-and-economics/docs/housing-economics-plus/special-studies/2023/special-study-cost-of-constructing-a-home-2022-february-2023.pdf https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/news-and-economics/docs/ho...
      • maxwell 3y ago
        Correction: finished lot itself was 18% of total sale, site work under 5%, appliances under 1%.
    • 2toxic 3y ago
      engineering and how you lay them
• juantroman 3y ago
  Only for subtropical climate? is this also suitable for tropics? like 0-15 degree N and S? How about termite?
• gorkish 3y ago
  > However, any modifications you make must be re-shared under the same licence. By everyone, for everyone. I’m gonna have to raise the alarm at this remark. There is no reasonable license that would permit enforcing this, that anyone should dare construct a structure bound by such license on their property. I am all for the idea of an open building system, but get real.
  • seabass-labrax 3y ago
    The important part is at the beginning of the paragraph: "The blueprints of WikiHouse are open source." (emphasis mine) They aren't telling you what you can and can't do with the house itself.
    • gorkish 3y ago
      You don't really get approval to build things without blueprints in most places. It's "open" but my architect can't draw on it? Naw. CCSA cannot work for such a thing, and anything that's not specificaclly CCSA is under possibly the most overreaching website "terms of use" I've seen in a long time. Good thing at least that junk appears entirely unenforceable. Build with it at your peril
      • seabass-labrax 3y ago
        What makes you think your architect can't draw on the blueprints? The designs are available on GitHub: https://github.com/wikihouseproject/Skylark https://github.com/wikihouseproject/Skylark They're marked as being made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence[1]. The page also says you have to agree to the 'EULA'[2] of WikiHouse, but these explicitly give precedence to the CC licences: All content should be considered to be protected by copyright, with all rights reserved other than those materials that explicitly carry another licence, for example an Open Source or Creative Commons licence. In these cases, that licence shall be clearly marked on or by the relevant media, file or repository. If you enter into a private agreement with your architect to build upon the WikiHouse designs, the most usual case is that you hold the copyright over the changes to the blueprints which you commissioned. Due to the terms of the CC licence that you agreed to, you must licence your modifications under a compatible licence if you distribute them further. Likewise, if your agreement with the architect gives them title to the copyright, this responsibility is initially on them. I don't see how this arrangement could be considered objectionable? [1]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.en [2]: https://www.wikihouse.cc/terms https://www.wikihouse.cc/terms
• foroak 3y ago
  Building technologies do need to evolve, but this ain't it. Starting with the tagline "Simple, beautiful zero-carbon building for everyone". WHAT? - Claiming that timber building products are carbon neutral is dubious, just talking about the timber alone, before any value added lifecycle. They should put some pictures of the Spruce forests their plywood comes from and let people decide for themselves. - Simple? Not really. They don't say much at all about what happens after you get walls and a roof. Who is going to plumb and wire, and how? How simple will it be to find a tradesperson who wants to actually figure out from scratch how to pull cable through your ikea home and put their license on the line? - Beautiful? Meh.. ask again in 30 years and see if people don't say it looks like it was built in 2023. And then just all the stuff that doesn't matter. The problem of making a building isn't putting up walls and a roof. That's usually the part that goes the fastest. Who cares that it's 'precision engineered' (spoiler alert, if it's OSB, theres no precision) and that it has 3x more compressive strength than stick frame. When was the last time you thought to yourself 'I wish I could put a car on my roof'?
  • foota 3y ago
    Why wouldn't raw timber be carbon neutral?
    • culebron21 3y ago
      Demand on timber causes manufacturers to go buy it from areas like Amazonia or Siberia, in both deforestation is now a serious problem. And it still requires a lot of energy to be spent on cutting and transportation.
• jlhawn 3y ago
  Can I build a 6-story, multi-family, point access block apartment building with this system?
  • BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
    They specifically say no, at the bottom of https://www.wikihouse.cc/product https://www.wikihouse.cc/product
  • ramesh31 3y ago
    No. But you can build something that is somehow both more expensive and worse than a trailer.
    • 2toxic 3y ago
      I lold))
• deleted 3y ago
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• shermantanktop 3y ago
  Note that the walls and interior floors are equally thick and as insulated as the roof. It is not a sensible or efficient use of materials, given how the physics of heat work. It is great, however, if your approach to construction was formed by playing Minecraft.
  • MattGaiser 3y ago
    Does efficient use of materials matter compared to efficient use of labour/financing to get homes built? Electron is regularly considered a horrible waste of "materials" in the tech world. It is still sensible to use as RAM is far more abundant than tech labour.
    • icegreentea2 3y ago
      Labour costs in construction is highly variable and situational, but 30-50% is a typical range. Material costs are a serious consideration in construction. Tradeoffs of material vs labour/capital costs have to take into consideration the specifics of the application.
  • adammarples 3y ago
    Note that it is an open source project and you are free to adjust the parameters to your liking
  • ethanbond 3y ago
    Or perhaps if you're prioritizing things other than maximally efficient use of materials? It seems like they're prioritizing standardization, especially of methods, more than almost anything else. AFAICT we have far more excess material than excess labor, so it doesn't seem particularly crazy to me?
    • geraldwhen 3y ago
      Is that so? Materials went crazy expensive during Covid and didn’t come back down.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• brodouevencode 3y ago
  Hopefully the roof of Wikihouse doesn't get any Wikileaks.
  • mglz 3y ago
    Do they include any countermeasures to guided bombs?
  • otteromkram 3y ago
    You have a Wiki'd sense of humor.
• willcipriano 3y ago
  Big Lincoln logs. Cool.
• class3shock 3y ago
  I like the ethos but to me it's pointed in entirely the wrong direction. Why not just make standard sections of 2x4 or 2x6 framing? Start standardizing window sealing details? Literally anything that will actually get some use? Instead we get opensource plywood boxes? Using plywood for all of the structural components means if you get a leak, which all houses get, you are in danger of much more significant damage than lumber framing. And with this system you still need to do all the normal things to build a house (get a designer, route plumbing, electrical, get a civil engineer, install all that stuff, etc.) just instead of framing you have custom blocks you need made. I just don't think these make sense.
  • mglz 3y ago
    I think it's about this solution being easy to make with CNC routers. Traditional framing is not made for automation, so they went to precut sheets of plywood. It's similar to 3D printing: You could make a doorstop in 30 seconds from a block of wood and a saw, or you could print it in 1 hour from plastic. The second option is better if you have no saw and a printer.
    • throwaway4aday 3y ago
      It seems like it would be much, much slower to CNC all the plywood and insulation and assemble the boxes and then put the boxes together than it would be to just frame a wall, sheet it and put insulation batts in. Having access to and operating a CNC also seems harder than learning to use a skill saw and hammer a nail. It feels like they're trying to apply abstraction to construction where you just have one unit that can be adapted to work for everything but they don't realize that already exists and it's called dimensional lumber.
      • mglz 3y ago
        > It feels like they're trying to apply abstraction to construction [...] As is tradition :)
        • 3y ago
• hettygreen 3y ago
  There's an episode of Grand Designs (great show) where some people build an entire house by bringing a CNC machine onsite and banging out pre-fab wall sections exactly like this and connecting them in place. Here's the full episode: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6hsxwd https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6hsxwd It's pretty cool to see, but in the end it seemed like way more effort than nailing some 2x4's together.
  • dstudzinski 3y ago
    There was also episode related to https://u-build.org https://u-build.org from Studio Bark: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7sqcy5 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7sqcy5 (Grand Designs: The Streets - Box House) which is another option
• Duanemclemore 3y ago
  Hi, architect here. Wikihouse has been chasing many of the dragons we've been collectively chasing in AEC[0] for... a long time. Seriously I wish I had time to reply to every single comment here because there are a lot of excellent critiques (not just of WH). It shows what kind of communication problem we have in AEC that even the critiques that HAVE good answers within their weelhouse aren't adequately addressed by WH. In the US nothing is EVER going to beat light gauge wood framing on cost. That's why you see even large (but not tall) complexes build from it.[1] It's been reduced to the 0th degree of expense because of the profit motive. That said, this is only when the "unskilled" labor of rough framing is cheap. But this doesn't necessarily hold for other economies. The early WH work seemed cartoonishly idealistic (they were literal kids so I don't really fault them). But that foundation never changed and a lot of what they built on that has seemed like solution in search of a problem. Especially when you consider you don't even have to leave the UK to find a better model for self-build[2] and automated modular small scale construction is a really active space right now. Other competitors[3] actually have online configurators that work well to arrange these kinds of elements. But they've realized that's where the value is and are holding their systems closer so they can maintain quality and monetize the expertise they brought to bear. And yet other systems have been using industrial scale and logics to great effect for a long, long time.[4] TBH the "open source" aspect is really kind of a gimmick. Their designs are useless without the overall system and the system is useless without some way of arranging it all properly. Plus - what are you going to do - buy and learn to run a mill, work your own ply with an extremely slow machine, assemble it in this (ridiculously) finicky way, source and install the insulation properly yourself, and still be confronted with the nontrivial tasks of... everything that's not structure and insulation? Not to mention approvals. In the end you'd need an architect to do all this for you. And... doesn't that defeat the point? It's very generous that they've assembled all the guides they have but there are cheaper and more flexible construction systems (light gauge wood, block, SIPS, ICF, etc) that are much more mature, non-proprietary (except ICF), much better documented, and much easier to train a helper or two for assistance. I really do appreciate what they're -trying- to do. But again, I just think it's a solution in search of a problem. [0] Architecture, Engineering, and Construction [1] https://lamag.com/urbandevelopment/geoff-palmers-faux-italian-renaissance https://lamag.com/urbandevelopment/geoff-palmers-faux-italia... [2] https://architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/2015/walter%E2%80%99s-way-the-anarchist-housing-estate https://architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/2015/walter%... [3] https://automatedarchitecture.io/ https://automatedarchitecture.io/ [4] https://www.ithouseinc.com/ https://www.ithouseinc.com/
• Michaelhartnett 3y ago
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• DeathArrow 3y ago
  Where I live people build houses mostly with brics and mortar, autoclaved aerated concrete or concrete. Wikihouse system won't help.
  • foota 3y ago
    Where do you live? (I'm guessing it's humid?)
    • ajmurmann 3y ago
      AFAIK this construction is the standard in much of Europe and for certain in Germany.
    • DeathArrow 3y ago
      Romania. Not especially humid.
• iamgopal 3y ago
  They should have start with standard sizes and publish their standards for all sub components ( and to matching existing pipe and electrical standards)
• computersuck 3y ago
  This is some kind of Cory Doctorow dream come true
• DANmode 3y ago
  Cease building dwellings using unsealed wood.
• rmason 3y ago
  Just learned about a Belgian company called Gablok doing something similar. One of the cool things about a Gablok house is that you can move it. The company that builds it for you can dismantle and reassemble it. For example if you live in Michigan and retire to Florida you can take your house with you! https://gablok.be/en/ https://gablok.be/en/ The video doesn't clearly show they deal with electrical and plumbing. They actually have slots built in where you can run the utilities. Then some small boards are screwed into the blocks and drywall is nailed into them.
• direwolf20 3y ago
  Houses aren't expensive because of the houses, they're expensive because of the spaces where you build the houses.
  • mrweasel 3y ago
    No, or maybe, depends on where you live. You can build the plot of land from the city where I live for the equivalent of USD60.000, maybe 75.000. This is in a nice suburb, close to the highway (but not to close), there a busses, railroad is close and you have easy access to an airport, daycare, schools and shopping. Building an average home is at least USD200.000 and most would probably spend closer to 300.000. Houses are expensive because materials are expensive and labor is crazy expensive. Unless you want to build in very specific spots the house is almost always going to be more expensive than the land it sits on.
• annoying1 3y ago
  https://www.iso-bella.nl/containerwoning/ https://www.iso-bella.nl/containerwoning/
  • culebron21 3y ago
    There are many companies offering such small prefab houses. This one [1] offers a system of container-sized blocks that are assembled in the factory, carried by truck and joined together on site. (Initially the blocks were container-size, and carried whole. Current designs are > 3m wide.) The biggest problem with container-based buildings is that the standard road size of 2600 mm is very narrow. Subtract 150 cm on each side for insulation and walls material, and you're left with 2300 (ISO container is 2350 mm wide inside.) (Standard bed is ~2100 mm long, so you can't put it laterally -- I tried, and discovered you can't walk normally in 20 cm isle.) [1] https://dubldom.com/ https://dubldom.com/
    • annoying1 3y ago
      From a research perspective you choose specifically what you need. Multiple containers can be used to optimize space but in these houses you don't need much and the houses shown on iso-bella are cheaper. I think you can be making those units self sufficient by self sustaining (vertical) crop farming where your own feces are used as furtilizer for example. Solar panels and satalite internet can be used for remote locations. There are plenty of inovations to apply to container building even a refurbish plan for old units. Plenty of options when you think about all unit functions not only living but also scientific or medical units that can be easily moved.
• hasoleju 3y ago
  I like their cost calculator on the website. I have never seen such a simple interactive method to determine the cost of a house to be built. My experience with building a house is that either you get a very rough estimate by someone which is often wrong or you have to pay an architect or engineer to come up with a more detailed and more accurate cost estimate. Apart from that I noticed that building my current home with their method would cost about 20% more than building it the oldschool way. That might be a problem for their business model.
• alexbezhan 3y ago
  People build much worse houses now, from aesthetic perspective. No matter where I go, I usually prefer to live in a city center because that's where the most pleasing houses are. We forgot how to build nice houses. Sad.
  • dheuehfk 3y ago
    I think it is not only about worse, better. Standardize the process, like a talking in engineering language, building/improving debates. Also open projects as for me have own style, feels like Ikea really.
• gumballindie 3y ago
  The most expensive part of house is the land it’s built on. Remote work alleviates that. No surprise that landowners in large cities push for a return to office work, along with workers that have no desire for a life of their own. Nonetheless wood houses are frowned upon in Europe. Except in the UK where housing is low quality overall anyway.
  • balfirevic 3y ago
    > The most expensive part of house is the land it’s built on No, not where I live. > Remote work alleviates that. Remote work doesn't change where I want to live, because I want to live where there are things to do, regardless of where I work.
    • gumballindie 3y ago
      > Remote work doesn't change where I want to live I dont care where you want to live. Those who want to live where land is affordable should be given the option. Given that land is expensive where you want to live this type of house build wont solve your issue - might make it worse since people have said it’s more expensive to build. If more people would be allowed to work where they can afford property then demand in your area may drop. Meaning you could afford buying where you enjoy. But most human farm advocates demand others to work from farms, and there is the issue. It drives land prices up in such places.
      • balfirevic 3y ago
        > I dont care where you want to live. Those who want to live where land is affordable should be given the option. You seem to be arguing as if I disagree. > Given that land is expensive where you want to live this type of house build wont solve your issue No, actually, construction costs are enormous and that's the problem where I live. Building a house would be 3-4 times the cost of the land - and we're not talking about rural land but semi-urban near the second largest city in the country.