The 100 Factories project, led by Open Systems Lab with partners University of Plymouth, WoodLab and Maahees Way, is funded by the Forestry Commission’s Timber in Construction Innovation Fund. One Hundred Factories will focus on increasing the future use and traceability of English-grown timber in the construction sector. This is an important part of how the UK will meet is climate goals, because embodied carbon from buildings currently makes up 25% of the UK's built environment carbon emissions. This collaboration between Open Systems Lab and partners aims to accelerate the UK’s transition to circular, zero-carbon building technologies. The project will support SMEs to access the digital infrastructures and standards necessary for manufacturing modular WikiHouse timber building kits.
WikiHouse is a circular, low-carbon, modular building system that can be digitally fabricated from English-grown timber and natural insulation. WikiHouses are manufactured by a distributed network of small, local fabricators and assemblers, using shared, world-class design solutions. The goal is to make it simple for anyone to rapidly build beautiful, high-performance, zero-carbon homes.
"People tend to think that, in order to shift towards better ways of building we need huge, factories that cost millions of pounds to set up" says project lead Clayton Prest. "But we're exploring how, by using digital infrastructure and shared solutions, networks of small local, fabricators and installers can collectively rise to that challenge, and become a significant force for building many thousands of buildings a year, at the same time taking carbon out of the atmosphere and locking it into reusable building components"
One Hundred Factories responds to a cross-sectoral housing challenge – not only increasing the market size for English timber manufacturers, but also developing skills across the sector, disseminating a proven low-carbon solution, and increasing demand for English-grown timber products. It is estimated that in the long term 100 manufacturing SMEs can collectively produce more than 1,000 houses per year. One Hundred Factories will help address the UK housing shortage and its legal obligations to meet the 2050 zero carbon targets, locking away 17t of CO2 per house.
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