Lab-O, a collaboration between Ku Leuven Architecture Ghent and LUCA School of Arts, organised a workshop week with 400 students of the architecture, interior architecture and design departments during which they build scaffold-like constructions at their new location 'Leiekaai’, a former Volkswagen garage in Ghent.

Lecture on OpenStructures at École d’architecture de la ville & des territoires Paris-Est. Commissioned by Thibaut Barrault, architect and co-founder of Barrault Pressacco architects, as part of the conference cycle 'The Liberation of the Object' aiming to describe contemporary architectural languages through the economy of the assemblages.

OpenStructures is considered as a design methodology for re-usable and adaptable furniture by noAarchitecten, Sergison Bates Architects and EM2N, three internationally operating architecture firms who are in charge of the architectural project for KANAL Brussels.

Under the name ‘Atelier Kanal’ they also draw a large part of the interior elements for the future KANAL-Centre Pompidou, that will not only house a museum of modern and contemporary art, but also the rich collections of architecture and urbanism of the CIVA Foundation. We are excited about the opportunity to accompany them in the use of OpenStructures and of taking part in their mission “to create a strong public building for Brussels, (…) a building that celebrates the notion of incompleteness where there is room for change. A project that will evolve as the users appropriate the space for themselves.’

Photo by Atelier Kanal

OS_Studio was invited to take part in the debate series ‘Celles qui font le design’ at La Fonderie Brussels. Initiated an curated by Make &Transmettre - Alice Emery, Mathilde Pecqueur and Salome Corvalan at La Fonderie, Brussels

Second of a series of workshops at the Morning Studio, one of the 11 BA departments at the Design academy.

OS shop interior for Twiggy in Ghent!

OpenStructures pitch at the MAD museum for design within the context of the New European Bauhaus festival ‘Building a bright future’.

The New European Bauhaus initiative, the creative counterpart of the Green Deal, calls on all of us to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future. Within the New European Bauhaus Festival, WBDM, the members of the Bureau of European Design Associations (BEDA) and partners host the Building a Bright Future conference.

OpenStructures lecture at CIVA, the Brussels architecture centre within the context of the exhibition ‘Institutions building’

The exhibition 'Institution Building' displays and questions the different elements of a museum - not only the most visible parts (such as the exhibition) but also the less public, often hidden components (such as archive, administration, maintenance). Following a sequential logic of 10 institutional components the exhibition will grow week by week, adding another element and eventually present the institution as a cadavre exquis – a permanently changing organism, constantly on questioning and legitimizing its raison d´être.

Curated by Nikolaus Hirsch, Matylda Krzykowski, Cédric Libert

OpenStructures workshop at ARCUS, Esch sur Alsette within the context of Esch sur Alsette, European cultural capital 2022.

Last week Cliona Harmey & Filip Berte launched Nul Punt Wolk – a critical mapping project. The modular support structure of their ‘Bare Map Prototyping Process Preview’ installation is based on OpenStructures and installed in collaboration with NCAD Gallery and BLANCO Ghent. 

ABC - Art Basics for Children in Brussels, a laboratory for aesthetic experiences, creative development and artistic awareness, tests our new workshop-materials that were developed in the framework of a circular economy program by the Flemish community.

Online workshop with a group of students from St Joost School of Art & Design, participating from remote locations and using the online database in order to get a hands on experience on digital co-creation and open design.

Luca School of Arts students from Gent and Brussels came for an introduction to the OpenStructures methodology and a first hands-on experience of modular design.

Participating in Makers eXchange's open call ‘Hyper Global / Hyper Local’, Maud Bausier and Julia Bertolaso want to match a random selection of parts from the OpenStructures database with found scrap materials from a local makerspace, puzzling them into objects that explore the limits of modularity and challenge our perception of waste. 

During an OpenStructures Playsession at KASK, School of Arts in Gent, students of three different departments (Autonomous Design, Fashion and Textile Design) brought their individual projects together and tested the possibilities of connecting to and with each other’s work.

Organised by MAD Brussels, OpenStructures joined forces with four other Brussels based circular design innovators. Presenting work by Rotor, Studio Plastique, Resortec, Amandine David and ourselves, the exhibition ‘Transitions, an ongoing operation on change’ presents these novel strategies and solutions for a society in transition. 

Discover the virtual presentation of OpenStructures and 4 other innovators from Brussels on the digital platform of the Dutch Design Week. On Wednesday 21 October, from 18:05 to 19:05, a broadcast of the Dutch Design Week TV Studio will be dedicated to Transitions. Watch it here.

(https://ddw.nl/en/programme/4606/transitions)

OpenStructures has been invited as an international guest to install a temporary OS_WorkStation at ‘Maison POC Economie Circulaire’  in the framework of Lille Métropole 2020 World Design Capital. The general exhibition structures are designed by Zerm Architecture and based on re-usable OS tube connectors.

Maïlys Gangloff’s PlantSitter for OpenStructures has been acquired by CID Grand Hornu for their collection and is on show in the exhibition Plantfever at CID Grand-Hornu, Belgium from 18.10.2020 - 14.02.2021. A limited edition of 5 copies is also available on our webshop.

For their third issue, Chinese DEMO Magazine dedicated an extensive editorial to OpenStructures. We are excited to find ourselves featured in between interviews with with head curator Renate Flagmeier of Werkbundarchiv - Museum der Dinge Berlin - as well as with Stewart Brand, whose publications have been a great source of inspiration & encouragement for many years.

photo by Demo Magazine

OS_Studio is co-developing a modular housing-unit in collaboration with the VUB University of Brussels (consulting), Labland (coordination), WoonCoop (financing) and Labeur (construction) from Gent.

Everything gets recycled!  Design Museum Gent has acquired the previous OpenStructures website for its collection.

Parallel with the launch of the new platform Design Museum Gent has purchased the previous and first OS website for its collection. Design Museum Gent reasons that the website is the digital manifestation of an early and valuable project of social, eco and DIY-design  and that design manifests itself more and more digitally and in the form of processes rather than in shape only. While the collection represents the history of Belgian design, the website will be its first digital, intangible collection piece and will continue to tell the story of the first phase of the OpenStructures project. The website will be presented later this year as part of the museum’s ‘Object Stories’ exhibition series.

OpenStructures is applied as a hands-on tool in an academic research project on retrofitting suburban areas by the architecture department of Hasselt University.

From 14 - 17 October, we will rethink suburbia by prototyping and building various proposals for retrofitting. All of this this will be supported by lectures on participatory design, collective learning and capacity building. The CAPA.CITY project is a collaboration between both academic and non-academic partners and carried out in 6 different residential subdivisions in Belgium, Denmark and France.

Deadline application: September 16, 2019 More information here.

The CAPA.CITY project is a collaboration between both academic and non-academic partners and works in 6 different residential subdivisions in Belgium, Denmark and France

Photo by Oswald Devisch

OS_Studio is commissioned by BC architects to design and develop the interior for several artist studios in the center of Brussels.

We  have a new Atelier / Archive / Workshop Space at the See-U site in Brussels.

As part of 80 projects, all of which have a focus on sustainability and social innovation, our second space in Brussels is hosting the physical archive of our digital parts library. It is a (co-) working place for designers and is used for hosting workshops.Contact us, if you want to file trough the physical database of parts or organise a workshop.

© Photo by Laurens Thys

Atelier Lionel Jadot has invited OpenStructures Studio to collaborate on a sustainable hotel project in Lisbon

Atelier Lionel Jadot from Brussels has commissioned OS_Studio together with Dutch designer Rikkert Pauw to develop a typology of lamps and furniture for an ambitious and circular hotel redevelopment in Lisbon. During a workshop hosted by OpenStructures, we sketched how the general design-concept by Lionel Jadot could be complemented with local found footage by Rikkert Paul and OpenStructures compatible elements by OS_Studio.

Photo by Laurens Thys

Want to know the future? Look at the past! That’s the basic idea behind the exhibition ‘Home Futures’ at Ikea Museum Älmhult, made in partnership with the Design Museum London.

In the midst of emblematic positions such as the work of Ettore Sottsass, Superstudio, Archigram, Hans Hollein, Ugo La Pietra and OMA - some of them eerily topical even today - OpenStructures exhibits its ‘Family of Objects’. It consists of products for the home that have a second, third or fourth use planned into their DNA. Next to these original objects by Atelier Ternier, Studio Minale Maeda and Disarming Design from Palestine, new hacks by Raw Color and OS_Studio show the future potential of dis- and re-assembled building parts into new functions and compositions.

Curated by Anna Sandberg Falk, Eszter Steierhoffer and Justin McGuirk; Exhibiting products by Atelier Ternier, Studio Minale Maeda, Disarming Design from Palestine; Concept by OS_Studio, hacked objects by Raw Color and OS_Studio; Photography by Ikea Museum

As a research to his graduation-thesis at Design Academy Eindhoven, Jonas Görgen is developing a modular and water-saving sanitary system based on OpenStructures.

OpenStructures lecture and workshop at KISD Cologne from 26/11/2018 until 29/11/2018.

OpenStructures is presented as part of the ‘future home’ exhibition at DML, curated/ commissioned by Justin McGuirk & Eszter Steierhoffer