WikiHouse Contributors develop Wren in Almere, Holland.
Almere is a unique, planned city and municipality in the province of Flevoland, Netherlands. It is the newest city in the Netherlands and has been growing and developing ever since it became a municipality in 1984 (first houses in Almere were built in 1975). Being such a new and experimental city makes it the perfect place for WikiHouse to be explored in this exciting project led by Ivar Diekerhof and Vincent Muller.
Vincent is an Architect of Ontwerpburo Muller and co-founded WikiHouseNL. He found out about WikiHouse in 2013 and has since spare headed it’s development in Holland together with Jan Willem de Groot and Peter Veldmans. They built a WikiHouse demonstration model several times at events & expositions in Holland. After that, they also built the very challenging WikiTower Pavilion at a showroom for sustainable building. Currently Vincent is the Lead Architect working on an ambitious WikiHouse project ‘Pionierswoning’. Ivar on the other hand is a Property Developer and Process Manager at KAW Architects and Consultants. KAW works for social housing landlords and care providers in Holland. Ivar has worked on different restructuring and regeneration projects in social housing neighbourhoods for the last 10 years. With a focus on bottom up projects which are often citizen led, Ivar believes strongly in the intelligence and knowledge of inhabitants of their own neighbourhoods. Ivar is currently hired by the ‘Woningbouwatelier’ — a think (and do!) tank for experiments in house building — to enrol new experiments. The Woningbouwatelier is part of the Almere2.0 program.
WikiHouse is on of these experiments. Their ambition is to realise 20–25 WikiHouses with a monthly cost from €500 (mortgage + energy).
If that works out, there is a serious alternative besides the overcrowded social housing/rental market.
We recently spoke to them about their Pionierswoning project, the first residential WikiHouse they are developing as an experiment for a larger project consisting of 20–25 units.
What drew them to WikiHouse was the focus on digital production as well as the appeal for exploring what could be the next generation of self-building and housing production. Both topics that are close to the heart of Almere, as one of the most active cities in exploring alternative housing. Vincent and Ivar shared some of the basic principles and ambitions behind what they want to achieve with Pionierswoning, the show home and prototype.
They also began to explore how the Wren System, shared on GitHub, might need to be adapted to fit the context of their local region.
The project is now being submitted for planning approval and the first prototype home will be built by volunteers and students at the end of summer. If you are interested to join building get in contact with Ivar. By the end of this year they hope to have a group together which will build the further 20–25 WikiHouses.
