We started the year with a bang….at the beginning of February we released the much awaited Skylark 250 at the Building Centre in London. As part of it, we also built a small Skylark structure (the first one outside the lab) for the occasion and were happy to welcome old and new friends to the launch event.
Spring came round very quickly and at the end of April we were excited to build the first WikiHouse with the Skylark 250 system in the Peak District (UK). A studio and garage for Tim, the team travelled to Derbyshire to take part in the building days. Check out what it looks like today. Just before that we also recorded our first community contributors call and heard from Lachlan, Jennifer and Amber. Thanks for taking part!
At the beginning of June the team held an event to share all we had learnt during the build in April, including what improvements to the system we were considering (pending structural testing). Together with our friends at Hawkins\Brown in London, we hosted a WikiHouse Hackathon, with over 40 people taking part for the full day. Attendees with a range of skills (software developers, architects, engineers and students) got together in 8 teams. You can see the winning team’s (WikiScraps) files here.
In June and July we worked with a team from the University of Strathclyde to test different alternatives to improve Skylark connectors. Read more here.
Phil from Real Living Homes also helped us test Skylark 200 (250’s thinner sibling) by building a garden studio and giving us feedback on the system before we released the 200 system files. Thank you for all your help Phil!
This summer we also hosted Vincent Muller, from our friends at WikiHouseNL. We heard about the first WikiHouse neighbourhood in the world, De Stripmaker, located in Almere.
In September Piyush from Pulp Build joined our community event. Piyush has been working with WikiHouse for many years and he told us all about his experience as a manufacturer using the system.
At the beginning of autumn we launched our brand new community forum on Discourse. We thought long and hard about what the forum should look like and are grateful for everyone’s help in getting it going! If you haven’t already, check it out and introduce yourself.
Another project, the WikiPavilion, was assembled in Milton Keynes. It was our first project built with Skylark 200, using the new connectors developed in the summer. Isn’t it a beauty?
In October the WikiHouse team took part in a call and Q&A session to talk about the upcoming Skylark v0.2. We also published our in-progress files and launched a new projects gallery.
During the autumn break we also introduced WikiHouse Skylark to S3 pupils in Edinburgh with the Engineering Development Trust - this was something new for us but we were delighted to spend a fun afternoon with the kids!
In November Mel and Gabriele took part in the first WikiHouse Skylark event in Spanish with Universidad de la Frontera in Chile. We were also delighted to welcome Nicholas from the Charleston Fab Lab all the way from South Carolina to hear about the 27 houses (and counting) they have built with WikiHouse.
Plus, the first WikiHouse in-person course took place in Cornwall, run by the talented Aaron (and with more planned for 2023, check out dates).
It’s been an amazing year for us and, as always, this work is all for you. We hope you come back for more in 2023, tell us about your projects, join our community events, and continue giving us brilliant feedback. Here’s to WikiHouse in 2023!