Two high-profile projects that aim to map out housing solutions of the future are being hosted at London’s Building Centre this month – WikiHouse and a crop of entries to the £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize competition on creating a new generation of garden cities.
Outside the Centre, Architecture Zero Zero and Arup engineers are constructing the world’s first open-source Wikihouse designed to be downloaded, adapted and digitally fabricated in just a few days.
The project team says that the house can be built in a few days and with minimal construction skills and for just a £50,000, although you would need to source a CNC router to digitally cut the components from sheet material such as plywood.
Architecture Zero Zero’s Alastair Parvin, co-designer of the WikiHouse, said: “The open secret is that in reality almost everything we today call architecture is actually design for the 1%. 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.”
The prototype project, which opens to the public on 12 September for the London Design Festival, allows users to connect to the WikiHouse WiFi to control lighting, sensors and ventilation. Real-time footage of the project taking shape is available here.
Meanwhile, David Rudlin of URBED has won this year’s £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize, which this year saw 279 entries explore its theme of building contemporary, fundable and popular garden cities.
Rudlin’s proposal is to build new extensions to 40 English towns and cities, including Oxford, Norwich, Taunton and Rugby, over a timescale of 30 years.
His idea is for circular extensions, including schools, shops and services, that would be connected by tram to their host town, an idea he told the Guardian would involve “taking a confident bite out of the greenbelt”.
The runner-up, winning a prize of £50,000, was charity Shelter working with PRP Architects, which proposed a new garden city on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent.
The Building Centre has curated an exhibition showcasing Rudlin’s ideas along with proposals from over 200 entries. The exhibition will run until 29 September.
