MA Dissertation / 05.2015

As part of the final year of undergraduate study at the University of Edinburgh a dissertation project is to be undertaken. The theme of 'open source architecture' was pursued and the project centered on the notion of open source philosophy applied to architectural practice.

To illustrate this, the construction of a fully operational CNC machine was built, the knowledge to do so coming entirely from online communities of hackers, programmers and DIYers - all of whom are no strangers to the ethos of open source. The machine was then used to draw the pieces needed to build a wikihouse which can be downloaded for free.

This exercise into machine building was intended to demonstrate the power and potential disruption that the democratization of production may offer us all when it comes to architecture and construction.

To view the full dissertation in pdf format, click this link.

A tutorial documenting the build and development of the CNC machine can be found by clicking this link.