Alistair Parvin of WikiHouse

I remember the first time I saw Alistair Parvin's Ted talk.

It spoke to me about so much more than architecture. His talk took me through trends, history and spoke to me about human consumption.

It spoke to me about an element of society that seems to have been forgotten, a true sense of community.

Most of all, it told me that there was a better way. A way that does not involve the need for more.

The Ted Talk

About WikiHouse - From https://wikihouse.cc/about

Wikihouse is an open source project to reinvent the way we make homes.

It is being developed by architects, designers, engineers, inventors, manufacturers and builders, collaborating to develop the best, simplest, most sustainable, high-performance building technologies, which anyone can use and improve.

Our aim is for these technologies to become new industry standards; the bricks and mortar of the digital age.

Wikihouse uses a little trick that software developers the world over know all to well, the art of components. The best description is from the React Website:

Components let you split the UI into independent, reusable pieces, and think about each piece in isolation.

While I think that WikiHouse is an awesome idea, there are many who disagree, including youtube user Tommy K. His comment on the youtube video outlines a relevent point :

If the target market can afford the cutting waste incurred by throwing away 30-40% of 50$ sheets of plywood they can certainly afford a 150$ nailgun. You'll notice that while the presentation has lots of inspirational quotes about open-sourcy-ness and equality it has absolutely no evidence of system efficiency. (oh, it only took them a day to put up the framing and sheathing of a 10x20 shed you say? After how many hours of cutting time on a CNC machine? Who's donating time on these machines again? Who can afford structural-rated plywood but not 2x4s and nails?) Undervaluing the resourcefulness, ingenuity and capabilities of inhabitants of favelas or any other person is a critical, first-world mistake in identifying and addressing the problems with the cost of housing. Can you identify any potential hazards of encouraging the residents of favelas to build plywood sheds in close proximity to each other? No? How about in tossing a thousand of these on a hillside in Haiti? Still clueless? How about along the ravaged coastlines of Jersey or the Phillipines? This is a solution in search of a problem and frankly Tedtalks should be embarrassed they sponsored this. 

What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below