The Future of Open Building

The Future of Open Building

An Explanation Of The Concept

A street analysis of Commercial Street, Fordsburg and redesigning the street edge
with relevance to the Open Building concept. © Diana Wolny, 2015

When referring to the notion of Open Building, John Habraken argues that the system should mediate between the needs of the individual as well as the community that inhabit the space. This allows for the design of a building or space with different systems that have the potential to be personalised and altered according to the individual’s or community’s needs at neighbourhood level. These conditions offer a sense of ownership, responsibility and care to those inhabitants, therefore creating an opportunity for a safer and cleaner space for them to occupy.

This is achieved through gathering communication and information, mainly on-site, in order to generate an infrastructure that evaluates what is required for the people within that particular neighbourhood. Through this understanding, one can develop an infrastructure that identifies the urban hardware and urban software within a neighbourhood and how it influences its users. Without the individual, the space would become inflexible and standardised and could therefore have a greater potential of failure due to the fact that the needs of the individual or community could not be met.

The relevance of Open Building is important to the individuals within a neighbourhood as it unites levels of decision making with construction as well as control within the system. These levels include the town fabric (the tissue), the base building (the support), and fit-out (the building’s infill). The buildings and infill within a neighbourhood can be transformed and replaced while the town fabric still remains the same.

This system provides the infrastructure the opportunity to reuse its building parts in order to lengthen its life expectancy and thus prevents the accumulation of waste materials which leads to a better design of an infrastructure. The director of OBOM Research Group, Ype Cuperus, states that Open Building is “a multi-facetted concept, with technical, organizational and financial solutions for a built environment that can adapt to changing needs. It supports user participation, industrialization and restructuring of the building process”.