The idea of Archiyou started while working as architects and builders and seeing that so many great designs and building insights disappear in a filing cabinet or folder on a hard drive somewhere.

This is related to the important optimization of a design for a given project (client, space, available materials and production partners), the CAD tools used and the business models of an expert-centered industry.

Recognizing design and building as being literally a niche art - but which hampers re-use and knowledge sharing - we set out to scale it out by codifying design and making it flexible to requirements of clients and production. This so-called parametric design is nothing new, but another thing is: Archiyou offers designs and production information - end to end - directly to people online. We call this Open Design.

We like to think Archiyou is a bit like the Wikipedia of design and making. The side that most people see is the content; Designs, information and plans. This is the Archiyou Library. But behind it is a way to create it: The Archiyou editor and the publication platform. By creating methods for both cost-efficient and scalable production and publication - just like Wikipedia - we like to achieve the democratization and revaluation of design knowledge.

The Archiyou editor is open to everybody to create parametric designs and plans in the same way we do. The core of Archiyou is open source, so you are not dependent on our platform. Your design and documentation is free to be go everywhere unlike most other CAD software platforms.

In the future we will build out the Editor with more documentation and educational content and create more links to the Archiyou Library; For example publish directly from the Editor to the Library.