Open Building

John Habraken first articulated the principles of open building in his book Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, published in Dutch in 1961 and in English in 1972 and 1999, and in many other languages. He argued that housing must always recognize two domains of action–the action of the community and that of the individual inhabitant. When the inhabitant is excluded, the result is uniformity and rigidity. When only the individual takes action, the result may be chaos and conflict. This formulation of a necessary balance of control had implications for all parties in the housing process, including architects. A research foundation was established in 1965 at the SAR (Stichting Architecten Research) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands to explore the ramifications, for architects, of the views laid out in that book. Habraken was invited to be Director of the SAR. Later, in the 1980s, a research group (OBOM) was formed at TU Delft under the direction of Professor Age van Randen, the goal of which was to study the practical issues of implementing the ideas in practice.

From the late 1960s onward, a number of pioneering projects were completed in the Netherlands, the UK, Japan and elsewhere. This history is recounted in part in Housing for the Millions: John Habraken and the SAR (1960–2000). Frans van der Werf, a Dutch architect, was one of the early pioneers. A number of other books have been published specifically on the subject, dozens of technical reports have been produced in several languages, open building is referred to in countless books, scholarly papers, dissertations, and articles in professional journals, and in-depth country reports and studies have emerged in Finland, the Netherlands, the USA and Japan. Residential Open Building was published in 2000, telling in more detail about the pioneering projects and the principles underlying their implementation. This book has been translated into Japanese.

Widespread interest in these concepts and their practical implementation led to the formation of an international commission. This group was formed in 1996, under the auspices of the CIB (International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction). Members of the CIB W104 come from many countries including the USA, the Netherlands, the UK, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.

This commission’s original purpose was twofold. First, it intended to document developments toward open building internationally. Second, it intended to stimulate implementation efforts by disseminating information and by convening international conferences at which government and university researchers, practitioners and others could exchange information and support local initiatives. These activities focused largely on the technical and methodological aspects of residential open building. There were continuing exchanges between colleagues in the less developed countries and developed countries, but the dominant focus was the latter.

Between 1996 and 2008, the commission met 14 times, in Delft, Tokyo, Taipei, Washington, DC, Mexico City, Brighton (UK), Helsinki, Paris, Hong Kong, and Muncie, Indiana (USA), on a few occasions with other CIB Commissions, and at several of the triennial CIB World Congresses. The most recent conference in the US (2008) focused on education, and included an international student competition, with winners from Korea, China, Singapore and the USA. Each conference has produced a published book of proceedings, containing a total now of over 300 peer-reviewed papers.