Alastair Parvin: Architecture for the people by the peopleParvin isn’t merely being rhetorical, as he shares in today’s talk. He and his London-based team have come up with a way to democratize both the design and the manufacturing of buildings. It’s called Wikihouse.

“The idea is to make it possible for anyone to go online and access a freely shared library of 3D models which they can download and adapt in Sketchup,” he says in today’s talk. “Almost at the click of a switch, they can generate a series of cutting files, which allow them in effect to print out the parts from a house using a CNC machine and a standard sheet material like plywood. The parts are all numbered, and basically what you end up with is a really big IKEA kit.”

Sounds intriguing… so how does it really work? We got Parvin to break it down, visually:

Wikihouse is an “open source construction kit.” It enables anyone with an Internet connection to access a shared library of structural designs.

Users simply choose a design. By clicking a button marked, “Make this house,” Wikihouse generates a set of cutting files for each of the parts that goes into that particular structure.

Using a CNC machine, the parts can be “printed” from a standard sheet material such as plywood.

All of the parts in the open source construction kit are numbered, and designed to minimize confusion. “The principles of openness go right to the mundane physical details,” Parvin says. “Don’t design a piece that can’t be picked up, and don’t design a piece that could be put in the wrong way around.”

The Wikihouse system is designed so that it slots together using wedges and pegs. Here’s another radical idea: even the tools used to make the house can be crafted using the Wikihouse technology. Design and manufacture your own mallet!

“People get confused between construction work and having fun,” jokes Parvin, who points out that before the Industrial Revolution, barn-raisings were a common occurrence. Why shouldn’t family and friends be involved in the construction of a modern house?

A building’s panels are screwed into place. A small team can complete a house structure in about a day. As Parvin lyrically describes, imagine “a future where the factory is everywhere, the design team is everyone.”

Mod cons might not be included in a Wikihouse, but they can certainly be incorporated. The frame of the house can easily be adapted to include the likes of cladding, insulation and windows as well as other amenities. Maybe one day, those will be downloadable files, too.

It’s still early days for the Wikihouse project (buildings take time to make, after all.) But here’s an intriguing timelapse video, filmed at the OUI Share Fest in Paris, which shows wiki-building at work.

Read much more about Wikihouse »

City 2.0: The Habitat of the Future and How to Get There, produced in partnership with The Atlantic Cities, celebrates 12 promising, provocative responses to this challenge — in realms ranging from transportation to food to art. It asks: How can we transform cities to be sustainable, efficient, beautiful and invigorating? And practically speaking, how do we get from here to there? While this book doesn’t claim to have all the answers, it begins to form the right questions with bold essays from 10 authors including: Jeff Speck, author of Walkable City; Kent Larson, of the MIT Media Lab, who gave the TED Talk “Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city“; Diana Lind, the executive director of Next City; and Emily Badger and John Metcalfe, writers for The Atlantic Cities.

The City 2.0 is available for Kindle and Nook, as well as through the iBookstore. Or download the TED Books app for your iPad or iPhone, and get a subscription with a new TED Book every two weeks.

In the next 30 years, two-thirds of our planet’s population will live in cities. Have you ever tried to envision the cities of the future?

Cities are enlivened by people, and people enable change. So today, we are launching our redesigned website TheCity2.org, a gathering place for all urban denizens to share stories, videos, ideas and innovations related to urban transformation.

Citizen-powered and story-driven, the City 2.0 site will showcase community driven, user-generated stories about what moves hearts and minds to take action to improve the way we share the planet. The new site features stories from some of our TEDxCity2.0 participants and City 2.0 prizewinners who received grants of $10,000 each to support their impactful work in areas like transportation, education, health, public space, safety and food.

The 10 prizewinners’ remarkable stories include grantee Emily May’s use of crowd-sourcing and social media to end street harassment, TED Fellow Gabriella Gomez-Mont’s desire to fight a health crisis in Mexico City by launching a citywide dance competition, and the Norwegian firm TYIN tegnestue Architects’ plan to build a community center in partnership with the residents of Bangkok’s largest slum.

Most importantly, the new TheCity2.org needs your story so we can learn from each other to make our urban spaces more vibrant, inclusive, and just. Please submit a story or inspiration from your city at TheCity2.org » 

We are excited about how your passions and projects will help us reimagine the cities of our present and future together. This is your opportunity to contribute to a global community of city dwellers, urban entrepreneurs, organizers, dreamers and doers.

The new City 2.0 website was born from a groundbreaking TED Prize winning idea, focused on sharing concepts, designs, and resources to spark urban transformation worldwide.

Big cities across the globe will soon be getting much, much bigger. As architect Kent Larson shares in this future-focused talk from TEDxBoston, 90 percent of the world’s population growth is expected to happen in cities. But while newly established cities tend to sprawl to accommodate growth, Larson envisions that the metropolises of the future will look more like cities of the past — for example, Paris — with tight-knit neighborhoods offering residents everything they need within the radius of a 20-minute walk.

So how will we live comfortably with even more people crammed into even smaller areas?

Larson and his colleagues at the MIT Media Lab are working on several innovations to make city dwelling far more livable, though the Changing Places research group and City Science Initiative. To hear more of the lab’s plans, watch Larson’s talk. Below, take a closer look at five of their fascinating research projects.

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A tiny car that can be parked anywhere: Hiriko (originally CityCar)
Brief description: This tiny two-person vehicle not only spins and runs off a rapid-charging battery — it also physically folds in order to minimize its parking footprint. Three of these small vehicles can fit into one traditional parking space. But the idea here is potentially even bigger. The MIT Media Lab envisions that these vehicles would be available for shared use, on demand. When you need one, you head to your nearest charging station to pick one up, returning it when you’re done.

When will it be available? The MIT Media Lab has been working with Denokinn, an innovation lab which focuses on turning ideas into products, to manufacture and distribute this vehicle. The full-scale working prototype will be crash tested this year and, if it passes, will go into production by 2013. (Read the New York Times’ announcement of the vehicle’s production.)

Headlights that communicate with pedestrians: AEVITA
Brief description: The city of the future will no doubt be filled with autonomous cars. So how will pedestrians know they’ve been seen without a driver that can make eye contact? AEVITA (Autonomous Electric Vehicle Interaction Testing Array) is designed to allow autonomous cars to interact with the world around them, giving pedestrians cues of recognition, and making driving intentions obvious to others.

When will it be available? There are no current plans for commercialization.

Bikes for elderly and disabled: Persuasive Electric Vehicle (PEV)
Brief description: Bike lanes are generally the province of the young and fit. However, the MIT Media Lab is creating vehicles to allow the elderly and disabled to use them too. These three-wheeled electric vehicles are legal for bike lane use because they require pedaling, while giving the rider an electric boost of up to 20 mph. But the use here could be even further reaching — this vehicle would be perfect for the businesswoman who has to wear a suit to the office, but wants a workout on her way home.

When will it be available? At the moment, thereare no plans for commercialization.

An apartment that changes, thanks to robotic walls: CityHome and Robot Walls
Brief description: 850 square feet is not a lot to work with. But an apartment can be made to feel twice that size through a transformable wall system that morphs with the push of a button. With robotic walls, a bedroom can transform into an office, or open up into a party space. A living room can morph separate offices or become a larger meeting space. Each resident would work with a designer to figure out their needs, configuring the perfect system for their demands.

When will it be available? A full-scale working prototype has already been designed. While commercial production is not yet planned, fabrication and assembly is set for the fall of 2013.

Do-it-yourself sunlight for tiny apartments: Robotic Façade/Personalized Sunlight
Brief description: By placing a lot of small apartments within one large structure, many abodes sacrifice direct sunlight. This mass-customizable module combines solar control, heating, cooling and ventilation — while increasing energy efficiency — and allows residents to program a personalized sunlight plan for their apartment, using their cell phone.

When will it be available? There are not currently plans for commercialization.

Want some more ideas on how we’ll live in 20 years? Here, five fascinating cars of the future.

What will the urban areas of tomorrow look like? More like an ever-changing and vibrant garden than a static set of buildings and blocks. In our new ebook Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives, British designer and architect Rachel Armstrong re-imagines the world’s cities and argues that in order to achieve sustainable development of the built environment — and help countries like Japan recover from natural disasters — we need to rethink how we approach architecture. By genetically modifying biological systems  and studying such things as protocells — nongenetic self-organizing molecules that exhibit movement and sensitivity to their surroundings — we could create more responsive and dynamic structures. The result is a new kind of architectural practice where cities behave more like an evolving ecosystem than a lifeless machine. We recently spoke with Armstrong.

What do you mean by ‘living architecture’?

It’s a way of using ecological solutions to urban problems. Living architecture works by applying new materials and engineered systems that harness some of the unique properties of ‘life.’ Living technology is more robust and environmentally responsive than traditional materials, and can deal with unpredictability in a way that current technologies cannot.

What developments in biotech will make a difference?

Protocells, for one thing. Protocells are a very interesting technology in this new portfolio as they are not strictly speaking ‘alive’ – since they do not possess a biological set of instructions, such as DNA – but they do behave in a life-like manner. They can sense and move around their environment through chemical means. They can function together in groups and can be chemically programmed to lay down solid materials. They are one kind of living technology that will be part of a whole new portfolio of materials that architects will have at their disposal as they develop of our cities. These materials will literally transform inert, non-living building surfaces into dynamic, life-like ones that carry out a set of functions normally associated with ‘life,’ such as, growth, self-repair or recycling resources, like oil and water.

These technologies already exist in the laboratory and in prototype model form, although they still need research and development to turn them into widely available products. The ideas may seem outlandish but they are based on real technology that exists today. All applications of scientific research in the laboratory remain speculative until they are transformed into products. But we are heading that way.

Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives is part of the TED Books series, which is available for the Kindle and Nook as well as on Apple’s iBookstore.

Watch this talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.