Architect Carlo Ratti has worked with Indian non-profit WeRise to develop a system of low-cost housing with a prefabricated core that homeowners can build any structure they like on top of.
The Livingboard system, which is currently being tried in a pilot project in a village just outside Bangalore, is designed to support housing development in rural areas anywhere in the world.
It combines elements of prefabricated housing with the do-it-yourself approach of the open-source and maker movements.
Homeowners receive the key functional parts of the house prefabricated and flat-packed — incorporating elements like waste management and water treatment systems — and then design and build the home they want on top of that.
Carlo Ratti is developing a system low-cost housing for use in rural IndiaRatti, who as well as leading his own architecture practice, Carlo Ratti Associati, is the director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), likens Livingboard to a portable "motherboard". "The maker movement has shown how empowering it is to put the new fabrication tools in the hands of people," said Ratti. "An important challenge for the next years will be to apply the same principle to construction – transferring the DIY attitude of Fab Labs to housing. This is the vision behind our design for Livingboard."

Some of the other functional elements that are packed into the Livingboard core inclu...