WikiHouse Dashilar Pavilion
Location : Dashilar, Beijing
Date : Oct,2016
Project Area : 8 sqm
Structure : WikiHouse structure system
Project Design : dotMake
Consultants : WikiHouse Foundation
Construction Coordinator : dotMake
Copyright: CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
Construction Team: Xing Ruoxuan, Duan Tianzhi, Lv Bohui, Wu Jing, Meng Huijuan, Wang Hao, Sun Ting, Wang xiaoqi, Liu Jingshu, Xu Shengrui, Xie Chengxi, Bai Zhen
Photo: Wu Qinshan
dotMake, an organisation aims to make digital fabrication accessible for public, has designed a pavilion using WikiHouse open construction system in Dashilar, Beijing during the Beijing Design Week 2016. The pavilion was assembled on site in seven hours by 12 unskilled high school students.
WikiHouse is an open-source building system. It is initiated by WikiHouse Foundation in the UK. It aims to make the construction process more convenient for everyone by using digital technologies.
The original design is published online by WikiHouse Foundation. We modified the size and height of the pavilion according to the site condition. Considering that the pavilion would be built by teenagers, we began to look for a new material other than the original plywood. High density PVC board is our final choice. Apart from its manufacturability for CNC machining, HD PVC board is durable without coating and is much lighter than plywood.
Since the pavilion would be a temporary structure, the sectional size of structural elements were reduced and the thermal insulation was replaced by prefab wood benches. The envelope material is translucent hollow polycarbonate sheets which exposes the inner structure. We would like the visitors to have a general understanding of its construction logic through its visual clarity.
As a first time builder, initially we planned a four days working schedule and actually got it done in seven hours. The assembly process perfectly demonstrated the efficiency of the WikiHouse system.
All the modification was base on the original template. As a contribution to the WikiHouse open source project, dotMake has uploaded the drawings on GitHub and shared the experience with the community to help other teams to further develop their own version of WikiHouse projects.
