Wikkelhouse: pick your modular segments & click them together

After a couple decades creating theater sets in Amsterdam, Oep Schilling and his company of makers Fiction Factory, put their CNC expertise and resources into building a prefab tiny house, using cardboard as the main structural element. Relying on a proprietary machine that can wrap corrugated sheets around a mold, they could create high strength cardboard that serves as both support and insulation.

The “Wikkelhouse”, or “wrap house”, is a truly customizable home composed of 5-meter-square (53-square-foot) modules that click together to create any-sized structure. The 1.2-metre-deep segments (3.9 feet) are first built up from 24 layers of cardboard moulded around a house-shaped frame. Once “printed”, the basic units can be customized: cut with one or two spherical windows, kitted out as a bathroom, a kitchen or even a narrow bunk room or two or three can be combined to create larger rooms.

Schilling says 20% of the orders have been for 8 segment shelters (often for nature cabins), though they have sold a lot of 4, 5 and 6 unit structures as well. “I hope to sell a three because I like it really tiny,” he explains. “Three could work, but it's a bit like a hotel room, but of course you have the sky, you have a garden. I've lived in smaller spaces, compared to a caravan this is like a villa."