IaaC: Self-Fab House

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The Self-Fab House

By Vicente Guallart – Director of IaaC

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(…) Anyone can produce anywhere in the world if they have the requisite knowledge and machinery. Instead of a world of consumers of resources and information, the Internet Age is creating a society of producers in which everyone has the potential to produce energy, food and commodities on the basis of shared knowledge.

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We are commited to the idea that housing can be self-fabricated using knowledge and processes that are shared through networks and local resources and machinery, making the production of a home specific rather than generic, a process that responds to the particular environmental conditions and mainly uses materials from local resources.

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Architecture in our hands

By Lucas Cappelli. Director Advanced Architecture Contest

The idea of solving such a widespread basic social problem as housing using global knowledge, shared experiences and the resolution of similar problems in very different places might well be addressed by harnessing the new communication and technology systems in conjunction with the notion of personal manufacturing.

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The self-fab house is, in essence, merely an excuse, it is yet another martyr to the generation of knowledge. It represents generosity, the suicidal capitulation of the architect, our infinite surrender, the understanding that for architecture to serve its deepest intention, the star architect has to disappear; the superfluous, the artificial, the annihilating effect of the superimposed, of the infamous, the unnecessary and the pornographic exposition of egotistic desires has to die. Only Architecture should remain.

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My House

By Wily Müller – Co-Director Master in Advanced Architecture

When we talk about self-fabricated houses we are probably talking about most of the domestic architecture in the world.

This is a long and profound global experience on which to capitalize.

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It is thinking ‘my house’ many times, when the really big change lies in thinking ‘my house’ just one.

But it will mean a radical change, If we can think of self-constructing, and do so in a unique, personal and decentralized way, we will enter a world of concepts that we must address, in addition to those of non-serial production.

(…) We will have to accept a greater consumption of land as a result of these practices of self-construction, or do we have new ideas about how to make houses that can be swapped around, stacked or slotted together?

Must we reinvent density urbanism in order to make self-fabrication possible?

(…)

Responding to these challenges is always a case of asking new questions.

Or rather, of asking once again the question: ’How will I make my house?’