About WikiHouse

WikiHouse is a modular, zero-carbon building system that aims to make it simple for anyone to design, manufacture and assemble beautiful, high-performance homes and buildings, even if they do not have traditional construction skills. Think Lego, but for real buildings.

It is no secret that if we are to meet the social, economic and environmental challenges of the 21st century, we need to transform the way we build. The legacy methods that are still widely used today, such as brick and concrete, are notoriously slow, wasteful, labour-intensive and carbon-intensive.

Digital manufacturing, combined with the increasing use of bio-based materials such as timber are increasingly bringing about that change.

WikiHouse is part of that transformation, but it is also different, in three key ways.

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Easy to build

WikiHouse blocks can be fitted together quickly and precisely, allowing the main structure to be assembled on-site in hours, by almost anyone. This makes it popular with self-builders and small businesses who want to adopt faster, better, more sustainable ways of building.

Distributed manufacturing

Unlike many other manufactured building systems, WikiHouse does not require a multi-million pound factory setup. WikiHouse blocks can be digitally-fabricated using relatively low-cost CNC machines. This means it can be manufactured by a distributed network of small, local businesses, anywhere.

Open source

WikiHouse is completely open source. That means anyone can take the files and freely use them, or improve them. WikiHouse is supported by a global community of designers and engineers, continuously testing and improving the system. By everyone, for everyone.

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A brief history of WikiHouse

The WikiHouse project was first started in 2011 by a team at Architecture 00, led by Alastair Parvin and Nick Ierodiaconou, working in collaboration with Momentum Engineering and Espians. Within weeks, teams and companies from around the world were downloading the files and beginning to use and improve the system.

What began as an experiment has slowly evolved from an idea to a reality. In 2014, with the first houses and buildings now built, the founders decided it was time to create a non-profit organisation, WikiHouse Foundation (now Open Systems Lab) to accelerate development, and to act as custodian of the public goods at the core of the project.

The first system, WikiHouse Wren, has been used by teams around the world to make hundreds of small buildings, including homes, workspaces, schools, garden studios, extensions and leisure structures. It has also been adapted, and has inspired many other innovative technologies designed around the same principles.

In Spring 2022, WikiHouse Skylark was launched. It is the most advanced WikiHouse system to date, and is now being used in projects across the UK and beyond.