I’m one of the creators of WikiHouse project (and lead founder of WikiHouse Foundation) – @ben_howes (http://twitter.com/ben_howes) gave me a nudge and suggested we throw some thoughts into the mix on this (it is Hacker News after all). Some really great points made here - I’ll focus on a couple and try to keep it brief.
The WikiHouse project began as just an experiment into digital, distributed housebuilding, but has turned into a serious open source project aiming to change the way building information works. We’re doing it the hard (and slow) way – so currently busy working through certification, regulation, liability, commercialisation etc. It’s already in use in various pilot projects by a bunch of teams around the world already, but as you can imagine, change happens slowly in this space.
In a nutshell, the advantage of digital fabrication is similar to any fabricated components (think IKEA). It brings speed, value, precision, performance-predictability, safety and mistake-proofing (which lowers skill and risk thresholds for small players) to construction projects, plus it’s editable as code. The opportunity we see is to push this from big centralised factories to distributed networks. The lead technology, WikiHouse WREN, is just intended as a starter for ten really. We started designing for machines and materials that are pretty widely available (Plywood, CNC), and then invited others to fork and edit, which is what’s happening. It is strong, buildable, airtight, performs well on cost etc, but yes, at the moment, it is limited in terms of span, height... Please do fork and improve it, or get into developing other open building technologies.
As a couple of comments mentioned, the key issues are around the limitations of sharing static design files, because, yes, price, conditions, regulations etc vary depending on where you are, and yes, there is a legal risk of any specific design shared being interpreted as professionally certified, and therefore exposing professional contributors to risk. So, over the last few months we’ve been working on some browser-based generative software for designing and delivering homes digitally without relying on external proprietary software like Rhino and Sketchup, with support for distributed supply chains and with checking protocols built-in. We’re hoping we’ll have some stuff to release before too long for people to get their teeth into, but as you can imagine, we have to moderate our excitement with a degree of sensible caution and thorough testing. But as a rule, we’ll be open-sourcing everything we can, as soon as we can.
Thanks for posting Alastair! What will be the status of your Rhino/Grasshopper process as you move over to your browser-based generative software? Will it still be integrated and supported, or are you phasing it out?
I ask because it is beneficial to have it integrated with Grasshopper/Rhino (or Revit/Dynamo) for not only the generative design stuff, but also the simulation and optimization plugins. i.e. Energy/environmental simulation, multi-objective optimization. These engines are starting to be ported over to the web, but for now Grasshopper is state-of-the-art in terms of design/simulation/optimization integration.
I'm interested in forking and playing with these kind of features, but would be prevented if this moved over to a browser-based software...
The WikiHouse project began as just an experiment into digital, distributed housebuilding, but has turned into a serious open source project aiming to change the way building information works. We’re doing it the hard (and slow) way – so currently busy working through certification, regulation, liability, commercialisation etc. It’s already in use in various pilot projects by a bunch of teams around the world already, but as you can imagine, change happens slowly in this space.
In a nutshell, the advantage of digital fabrication is similar to any fabricated components (think IKEA). It brings speed, value, precision, performance-predictability, safety and mistake-proofing (which lowers skill and risk thresholds for small players) to construction projects, plus it’s editable as code. The opportunity we see is to push this from big centralised factories to distributed networks. The lead technology, WikiHouse WREN, is just intended as a starter for ten really. We started designing for machines and materials that are pretty widely available (Plywood, CNC), and then invited others to fork and edit, which is what’s happening. It is strong, buildable, airtight, performs well on cost etc, but yes, at the moment, it is limited in terms of span, height... Please do fork and improve it, or get into developing other open building technologies.
As a couple of comments mentioned, the key issues are around the limitations of sharing static design files, because, yes, price, conditions, regulations etc vary depending on where you are, and yes, there is a legal risk of any specific design shared being interpreted as professionally certified, and therefore exposing professional contributors to risk. So, over the last few months we’ve been working on some browser-based generative software for designing and delivering homes digitally without relying on external proprietary software like Rhino and Sketchup, with support for distributed supply chains and with checking protocols built-in. We’re hoping we’ll have some stuff to release before too long for people to get their teeth into, but as you can imagine, we have to moderate our excitement with a degree of sensible caution and thorough testing. But as a rule, we’ll be open-sourcing everything we can, as soon as we can.