If you can barely swing a hammer, you can still build your own home.
Builders at the Maker Faire in New York City proved this point last fall, with something akin to an old-fashioned barn-raising.
The event celebrates the do-it-yourself aesthetic, particularly when it comes to digital fabrication and open-source construction plans. Using wooden mallets cut from plywood, a crew of eight banged together the slotted frame of a WikiHouse without a single nail.
The result: a livable home.
"No one, I would say, is a professional builder of buildings," said Nick Ierodiaconou, an architect on the London WikiHouse team. "When everyone came together at the beginning of this process, no one knew the system."
Advances in technology and a bit of architectural activism have led to the WikiHouse project, founded in London by Alastair Parvin two years ago. The project makes digital blueprints available online for free. Amateur builders use computer-cut plywood pieces to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
It took the WikiHouse team of eight just two days at the Faire to build its two houses, which were 12 feet wide, 26 feet long and nearly 10 feet high.
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