The future of Open Building_Zurich

Built environment | Levels | People/Agents | System

The Future of Open Building conference, calling for participants to critically consider the core principles of what Open Building offers, also invites participants to further clarify these fundamental principles with practical case studies. The exploration of these case studies by academics and practitioners is intended to inform the role that Open building should play within contemporary practice.   

As I unpack the concepts of Open building, I am excited primarily by its close relation to how I perceive architecture. Secondly, by the articulation and further clarification of some of the ideas one grows to develop in how one views the built environment and the role of architecture.

I personally consider architecture, whether a building or a space, as an integrated system, made up of various components (or sub-systems) working together to form the whole. In the same breath, I consider that same architectural entity as also being a component of a greater, more complex system (the environment in which it sits). Thus, I would consider it as a system within a system. The distinction between those two perspectives of the same thing is what I would understand Open building terminology would refer to as levels.

The system in which architecture (buildings) exists as a component, includes other components: other fields of knowledge, including users and how they interact with the environment. Thus architecture doesn’t exist in isolation. It is here where I find the relevance of Open building: in exploring the interfaces between spatial practitioners and societies when it comes to the delivery of architecture, and approaching the design of architecture with an understanding of its impact on the other parts of the whole in which it sits as a component.

The emphasis of Open building in designing for transformation, within a stable framework is a step further in ones understanding of the built environment as a system. It is here where I see Open building being further explored in my personal design thinking.