Week notes #86
More WikiHouses coming to the Netherlands
Following the success of the WikiHouse neighbourhood in Almere, this month we heard the fantastic news that another 14 WikiHouses will be built in Haarlem, Netherlands. These homes will be part of a larger sustainable neighbourhood called Proeftuin Cajanus - read more (in Dutch): https://faro.nl/nieuws/combinatie-faro-hbb-groep-wint-zwemmerslaan/
And on May 6, Vincent (WikiHouseNL) will speak about WikiHouse at the Pixii expert day in Antwerp, Belgium. More information and tickets: https://www.pixii.be/aanbod/opleidingen/beter-bouwen-met-prefab-en-systeembouw/
Meanwhile in Belgium
We are following the progress of the first WikiHouse being built in the country by REstore in Liege. Find them on Instagram to learn more:
WikiHouse in Scotland
In Scotland, we have just added a new supplier in East Lothian, GeoPly, who recently manufactured the blocks for Sàmhach, a one bedroom cabin in the Isle of Skye. The cabin has now arrived in Skye (after being built in the mainland) and we look forward to seeing it finished and ready received its first guests!
We are working on
In case you missed it and are wondering about Skylark v1, we are currently in the midst of developing a series of parametric scripts to manage block creation using Grasshopper. This is a new approach for us, as before we have only created blocks manually - and it is quite a complex, rules-based script. See what the “backend” looks like on the left hand side in the image above.
[The longer explanation: Every WikiHouse block is made of a repeatable pattern of geometry components, that we call “bits”. We are trying to take advantage of this to have the blocks automatically generated once the bits are specified. The challenge we face is that blocks need to be compatible with each other- they need to fit together and talk to each other. To do this we are trying to work on the right logic to make this interoperability work.]
Fire update 🔥
We are delighted to confirm that following fire testing, WikiHouse walls with plasterboard build-up are certified for a fire resistance time of up to 90 minutes, and WikiHouse floors / roofs up to 60 minutes. Read our full technical spec document.