Outline
OpenStructures (OS) is an open modular construction system that promotes circular material flows and facilitates re-use and repair.
OS allows to build things together at a moment in time, where anyone is connected to everyone and everything can be produced everywhere.
It links modularity to collaborative innovation and new decentralised production techniques and results in a more sustainably built environment.
OS unfolds through a continuously evolving exploration by a community of authors that test and evaluate its potential within the field of design, art and architecture.
Method
OpenStructures is based on an inherent design methodology that incorporates future change by encrypting it directly into the DNA of its building components.
It produces interchangeable parts, flexible objects and a built environment that can adapt and scale over time. OS constructions therefore anticipate a dynamic future.
The most diverse authors, from DIYers to accredited brands can make use of the OS_Grid1, a shared geometrical design template. Combined with the OS_Design Principles, a set of rules that warrant disassembly, building components are not only compatible within the same system but can be combined with the ones of other authors, hereby allowing diversity within modularity.
Network
More than 300 participants - designers, architects, artists, researchers, makers and producers from many different countries - have contributed to OpenStructures so far. By testing, evaluating and experimenting with these principles within their own practice and within different domains, each of them has improved, enlarged and helped to diversify the growing database of parts, structures and applications.
Evolution
OpenStructures was initiated by Thomas Lommée in 2007 and has ever since been further pursued, tested and refined both via self-initiated as well as via commissioned work. Projects have been commissioned by academic partners and cultural institutions, a.o. by Stroom The Hague, The New Museum NYC, Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam and the Design Museum London.
Workshops and Lectures have been held a.o. at the Vitra Summerschool in Boisbuchet, Adidas Makerlab Herzogenaurach, the Design Academy Eindhoven and many other leading European design schools.
OS has been featured in prominent design magazines such as Wired, Domus, Icon and Damn, quoted in pivotal publications such as ‘Open Design Now’, ‘Hello World’, ‘#AllesIstDesign’ and ‘Beautiful users’ and has been exposed at established venues such as at the Istanbul Design Biennial, the Vitra Design Museum, Arc-en-rève in Bordeaux, MAK Vienna and the Walker Art Center.
Meanwhile OS is being adopted and implemented as a new design methodology within many experimental projects, such as the Open Design School Matera, Ideas City, Capacity building and Atelier Luma Arles.
OS was supported by the IP cluster of KU Leuven and has been a Circular Economy laureate by the Brussels Capital Region.
Ambition
The OS Platform is an ever growing database that archives outcomes, events, participants, partners and places and relates one to another by identifying each link via a unique registration number.
The Platform aims at establishing a balance between openness, fairness and economic viability. Parts are open and accessible enough to allow innovation based on existing designs, yet closed enough in order to protect their creative value. Revenue is redistributed between the community and the platform in order to remunerate the work of contributors on the one hand and to maintain the services of the website on the other.
Participation
Contact us, if you would like to participate –
f.i. by submitting a design, commissioning a project, adding a product, implementing research or if you want to support or sponsor any of these activities.