WikiHouse can make anyone an architect or a building contractor

The WikiHouse system provides a straightforward process comprising both the design and fabrication of houses. A project group at Aarhus School of Architecture has been testing and adapting the system. Most recently, two WikiHouses were exhibited at the Aarhus Festival.

07.09.2021

Building your own house. Today, this is a challenge reserved for the few – and one that requires quite a lot of knowledge and skills. In the future, it may become a challenge everyone can take up – just as you can already design your own kitchen with just a few clicks on a website.

WikiHouse på Frederiks Allé. Foto: Niels Martin Larsen

Associate professor Niels Martin Larsen has been involved in the testing of the so-called Wikihouse concept: “You specify a few straightforward dimensions, the computer then automatically creates production drawings of all the building parts. You then feed these drawings into a CNC machine, which can mill the plywood components, so all that’s left to do is to assemble the house on site”, Niels Martin says.

Design-to-fabrication

This process is an example of a coherent design for fabrication concept. It is actually a British system developed in 2011. At Aarhus School of Architecture, the process has, however, been adapted to the local context and is currently being used for producing two houses; these houses were exhibited in connection with the Aarhus Festival. It was Karsten Sinning, from AART Arkitekter, who, early in 2020, contacted the school to get assistance to use the Wikihouse concept.
The houses were produced in collaboration with a local company called Scanex A/S. This process required a significant revision of the WikiHouse system. Research assistant Povl Filip Sonne-Frederiksen was responsible for this part of the work.

“In terms of the latest version of Rhino, a 3D drawing program, The system was not up-to-date. We have brought it up to date. But we also had to know the purely physical level of precision of the system. For this reason, Max Arpe-Sørensen, who was then an intern in our robot lab, produced a series of test joints. The system is an open source system, which means everyone can adapt the system to suit their specific purpose”, says Niels Martin Larsen.

WikiHouse på Lilletorv. Foto: Niels Martin Larsen.

A library of building components

And for this very reason, the many users are continuously able to add e.g. new materials and components to the system – generating a kind of library that everyone can use. This means that, in time, it should be possible to expand and develop the system into a foundation for a flexible and speedy way of producing buildings.

“What is clever about it is that you have a lot of knowledge about the needs for materials and the actual manufacturing of the house, even when designing it”, Niels Martin Larsen.

“These types of digital workflows are something we explore in many different projects, and it is very exciting to try it out in full scale, even though it is only a small carcass. That design and production are so closely interconnected also allows you to work with more complex forms in architecture. ”

Facts

The project group at Aarhus School of Architecture: Niels Martin Larsen, Povl Filip Sonne-Frederiksen and Max Arpe-Sørensen
The project is sponsored by Tuborg, Aarhus Festival, Rockwool and Scanex A/S
The latter company has also been handling both the production and assembly of the two test houses. AART Arkitekter and Rønslev Ingeniører were consultants on the project. And Upcycling Forum has contributed residual materials to the project from e.g. Stoko Plast og Fiberline.