WikiHousePDX is all about achieving truly affordable housing here in Portland Oregon and wherever else people find themselves priced out of conventionally constructed homes. The core premise is empowering self-builds of small starter homes and ADU’s by reducing the complexity of construction.
The way we build houses today has a long tail into the past. Inherited concepts of design, materials, and assembly have led to building processes that require skilled labor with elaborate and expensive toolsets. The result is nice houses – but nice houses unaffordable for many. By reducing the complexity of constructing small houses we can empower lightly skilled people to build their own starter home, on a micro-lot, with simple tools. Self-building alone reduces cost, small structures on micro-lots even more. These are starting points on a path toward the goal of modest-but-comfortable starter homes affordable for those excluded from traditional housing.
We center on the design, fabrication and assembly concepts of WikiHouse. WikiHouse is an opensource system that harnesses the efficiencies of digital design (CAD) and CNC fabrication to create building blocks that are easily assembled into structures. It empowers a small group of friends to assemble the shell of a small house, say 400-800 ft², in a matter of days. Once the strong and energy efficient base enclosure is in place, there are several other cost-reducing paths to transform it into a comfortable finished home. This site explores those paths.
In sum, WikiHouse represents a break from the past and an opportunity to create a cottage-industry economy that can provide plentiful starter homes.
