Week notes #2
[These weeknotes started in late 2021 in the lead up to the release of WikiHouse Skylark, as a weekly update for our WikiHouse Slack community. Follow the link to find out more about the community and how to join.]
Happy Friday! This week the WikiHouse team has been working on-
A WikiHouse cost calculator- to allow people to quickly calculate estimated costs based on the number of blocks used. Still very much a draft but my highlight so far is the ability to show embodied kgCO2 savings. The plan is to release it at the same time as Skylark.
On blocks news…
Quick recap…A bit like lego bricks, Skylark blocks are built by putting together flat timber panels (cut with a CNC machine). So far we have added: walls, windows/doorways and floor blocks to the library, with more on the way. To complement the blocks we are also creating assembly guides and a Skylark design guide.
On more technical news..
Together with the University of Edinburgh we have had a paper accepted for publication at the Engineering Structures Journal on the structural performance of composite WikiHouse beams from CNC-cut timber panels. We will let you know once we have a publication date. Also, round 2 of testing will be starting imminently at the University of Edinburgh, following on from round 1 in July.
This week we are also-
Planning an online launch event for Skylark. Date TBC. We want to make sure people all over world are able to join/take part, so we have started to plan what that can look like.
Finally a short note on what this “closed” stage of Skylark is about. There is a lot of development happening behind closed doors prior to launch and there are 2 main reasons for this: 1. The development work happening right now involves structural leaps from previous versions. Obviously, we want to be very cautious and ensure we release a system that is properly documented and tested. 2. We realise that sharing WikiHouse files has been hard in the past. Our goal for Skylark is that it will be much better suited to file sharing and therefore encourage more open collaboration. So right now we are doing the groundwork to ensure Skylark is more shareable.
Every week I will be telling you what we are up to. I appreciate all your comments and DMs you’ve sent me about the community. I share them all with the team because we want to make sure the content in here (and the new website we are building) works for everyone, whether they’ve built 10 WikiHouses before or they are only just starting off. Thanks again to those who answered the survey because that was hugely helpful.