Prefabrication experiments - 193 - current practices - 04 - DIY Hermit House micro dwellings

The do-it-yourself, maker and hacker era is placing the aptitude of making things back into the hands of the many reforming manufacturing and gaining traction in multiple sectors of trade and industry. Crafting, modeling and fabrication tools are getting cheaper. As the comfort level grows within the population, people will be likely to take on bigger and more ambitious projects. Houses, cabins, sheds and dwelling construction have forever been in the hands of DIYers as house construction was historically a social phenomenon. Industrialization modified these social conventions but today, people can literally take «matter» back into their own hands, transform it and build their own spaces. The open source distribution of plans, models and processes amplifies the possibilities as the amount of available information grows at an exponential rate. Architects are tuning into this evolution creating DIY processes or systems democratizing the added value of intelligent and informed design principles. 

Using predefined modules to organize a house, generating a house from readymade components and fabricating to measure from a set of variables are three different strategies that have been used to facilitate the DIY house. Digital fabrication is particularly suited to the third strategy and portrayed nicely in a recent proposal designed by Daniel Venneman and Mark van der Net. The Hermit micro-dwelling combines the simple idea of house segments with the robust geometry of folded plate structures. The three-dimensional prismatic living environment created from a flat sheet material such as plywood separates this micro-dwelling from the more customary cube or basic rectangular prism.  The small 14 sq meter footprint aligns a series of sectioned triangular solids to form a saw-tooth pattern in plan and in vertical section. Assembly of each saw-toothed segments increases strength as the triangular shapes keep the adjoining prisms stable as adjacent arcs in aqueduct construction. A prototype was built as part of a research project examining market potential for modest living spaces. Built from standard plywood sheets, the home’s organization is customizable using an-on line configurator offering various options: height, width, depth. The plywood is then cut, flatpacked and delivered to any site and assembled to suit any number of uses from studio, to guesthouse, poolhouse or a small home office space.

Hermit house from the company's websitehttps://www.hermithouses.nl