£50,000 printed house released by WikiHouse

From: http://www.technology4change.com/page.jsp?id=312

Looking at the details in the PDF, a lot of the ideas are similar to those being used by ecofab for my project:
– see some screen grabs below.


From the article:

WikiHouse has released the design for a £50,000 printed house for the UK that could help tackle problems like urbanisation, climate change and inequality, say creators.

The design is the latest creation from the non-profit project that has been developed to help produce low-cost, high-performance houses that are suited to local needs.

The project, called WikiHouse, is an open source construction system which makes it possible for anyone to design, share, download, adapt and ‘print’ houses.

Users of the system can ‘print’ house parts from a standard sheet material like plywood, and the main structure assembled in about a day without the need for conventional construction skills, say creators.

“The open secret is that in reality almost everything we today call architecture is actually design for the 1%,” said WikiHouse co-designer Alastair Parvin of London-based design studio 00.

 

“The challenge facing the next generation of architects is how, for the first time, we will make our client not the 1% but the 100% – to radically democratise the production of architecture.”

He added: “We are moving into a future where the factory can be everywhere – and increasingly the design team can be everyone.”

WikiHouse is currently under development, with a growing community of teams and is seeking collaborators and funders.


Wall panel layers:

 

WikiHouse-Panel-detail

 

WikiHouse-Panel

Assembled wall panel:

The first few steel bits of the frame go up

The first few steel posts go up. These are to support steel cross beams in areas where Glulam beams would have been too thick in terms of total building height.

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In the above photo you can see Bitrock has been applied to the outer edges of the frame to complete the external layer of Bitrock for those bits of the house that will be up against the retaining walls.

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The footing for the east garage wall and boundary wall alongside this has also been poured.

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This includes steel rods that have been epoxy bonded into holes drilled into the previously poured (and now set) footing to the rear garage wall.

First bit of the frame has gone up

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That’s a big set square !

The site is laid out with the steel cross beams in rough position:

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These are the feet that bolt the wooden and steel frame to the ground:

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OK, from outside this office doesn’t look like much:

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But check out the view !

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The frame construction prelims

OK, so the bungalow demolition, dig out, retaining walls, foundation pads etc. were also project stages to get this far, but they weren’t the start of a clear up, frame Glulam by Glulam check to see it’s all as it should be, so the frame can start going up this week. All being good (the rest of the week wind and rain forecast is lots of both, which isn’t ideal) the frame will start to go up on Wednesday.

Having 9 of the ecofab team on site certainly makes quick work of any site jobs.

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By the early afternoon the garage area was a tidy collection of most of the site material.

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and the last concrete slab steel work was ready for the pour (which should be tomorrow, Tuesday the 19th).

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