Photo: James Duncan Davidson

One of the things we’re interested in exploring here at TED is … what happens after a talk? Most often, a speaker is telling us a story without an ending — a tale that’s just beginning rather than coming to an end. That’s certainly the case with TED2013 speaker Alastair Parvin, whose project, Wikihouse, is really just getting started. Parvin has created an open-source construction set for a house, and I caught up with him in a break at the conference to get more details about some of the projects that are underway to build on it.

One application for this cookie-cutter build-your-own-house system is disaster relief. At least, if done responsibly. “Actually, the last thing you want to do after a disaster is build,” Parvin points out. But those caught up in the aftermath of an event such as an earthquake can find themselves stuck in grim emergency housing for long periods of time. Parvin describes a Wikihouse-enabled project in Christchurch, New Zealand, an area that experienced a huge earthquake in February 2011, and where citizens are still trying to rebuild.

Might Wikihouse help empower them? Parvin hopes so. “They’re looking at coming up with a construction model for sustainable housing rebuilding, led by communities there,” he explains. It’s that last phrase that’s crucial. “It’s an interesting flip from disaster relief housing to community-led development.”

Then there’s Wikihouse/Rio, which is using the system in a rather different way — as an “open-source maker lab in the heart of the favela.”

“There, they said not to worry about making a structure,” Parvin says. “Kids and teenagers can start experimenting, maybe creating furniture. Maybe that will lead to building, but it’s not about us defining what happens from the outset. It’s about being open. We’re giving people amazing tools and saying this could be a serious form of community development, but it’s led by them. If they get to the point where they want to build, that’s great.”

This diversity of applications is central to the promise and potential of Wikihouse. “It’s great to do a TED Talk,” says Parvin, for whom Wikihouse is a passion project he works on alongside the others he undertakes as part of the Zero Zero architecture collective in London. “But this is an open-source project. It’s not about me standing up on stage and showing everyone what we’ve done. It’s more about issuing an invitation to others. Frankly the less control we have, the happier we get.”

The Klong Toey Community Lantern — a community space in the oldest and largest of Bangkok’s slums — was built very quickly. Not quite as quickly as shown in this three-minute timelapse video, but construction for the project took just three weeks thanks to the help of the community.

But while construction went fast, Norwegian architects Yashar Hanstad and Andreas Gjertsen — of the firm TYIN tegnestue Architects – took six months to design the space. They conducted interviews with Klong Toey residents and held public workshops to find out exactly what the 140,000 person community — which struggles with rampant unemployment, drug use and substandard housing — needed. The goal was to create a safe oasis for community members of all ages to play and congregate.

The centerpiece of the Community Lantern is a soccer field, with bright lighting, that can double as a basketball area. Around it is an open structure with informal rooms for groups to hang out in and hold their own events. The walls are climbable and include hanging swings, for easy game watching.

“The area struggles with drugs and crime amongst other challenges, and we hope this project can be a little contribution that can lead to something positive,” says Hanstad.

Hanstad and Gjertsen have been named the latest winner of The City 2.0 award for the Community Lantern, and for similar projects they’ve launched in underdeveloped areas of Uganda, Sumatra and Norway.

In 2012, the TED Prize was bestowed upon an idea rather than an individual — The City 2.0, an online platform for the sharing of ideas to make cities function better. The $100,000 prize was broken into 10 grants of $10,000 each, to be given to a variety of projects spanning areas like transportation, education, housing, health, public space and food. Hanstad and Gjertsen have been given the ninth of the grants.

To suggest a project for the final City 2.0 awards nominate it through The City 2.0 website.

The New York Times doubled-down today on articles about TED Fellows, running stories on Camille Seaman’s portraits of icebergs as well as on Skylar Tibbits’ toys that assemble themselves.

The photography blog Lens turned its eye on Seaman’s work, marveling out how she captures the personalities of icebergs and glaciers in her stunning images.

“They are like humans in that each one reacts to its environment and its circumstances in its own way,” says Seaman, who has given a TEDTalk and been interviewed on the TED blog. “I’ve come across icebergs that were very stalwart and just refused to dissolve or break up. And there were others — massive, massive icebergs — that were like ‘I can’t take it anymore’ and in front of my eyes would just dissolve into the sea. There’s so many unique personalities. There’s a sadness to them.”

So why icebergs?

Seaman explains to Lens that, as a girl, her grandfather — a member of the Shinnecock tribe — would take her into the forest and show her how to appreciate a tree as an individual. But it was chance that brought her to ice — she traveled to the Bering Straight after being bumped from an Alaska Airlines flight and getting a free ticket as a consolation. In Alaska, Seaman walked on an ice bridge. “I understood that I was on my planet, that I was made of its material, and that in the scheme of things I meant nothing,” she says of the experience.

Meanwhile, the technology blog Bits found its way to MIT architecture researcher Tibbits, who has given a TEDTalk explaining his belief that, in the future, buildings will be self-assembling, self-replicating and self-repairing — just like a strand of DNA. But before he tackles skylines, Tibbits is demonstrating his concepts on a smaller scale — with toys inspired by the self-assembling seen in microbiology.

The Times describes a toy that Tibbits showed at TEDGlobal2012. The toy begins as a set of colored rocks in a flask. But as the flask is shaken, thanks to magnets, the pieces slowly assemble themselves into a pod. Tibbits is also bringing self-assembly to furniture, creating a stool that assembles itself when tumbled in a spinner.

So why is self-assembly so important?

“Construction at human scale is brute force,” Tibbits tells the Times. ”In extreme environments, we don’t know how to build things.”

Camille Seaman (left) and Skylar Tibbits (right)