Open Architectural Design: el proyecto OSBA desde el MIT

Acabo de descubrir que en el MIT estan organizando una búsqueda acerca del desarrollo de edificios Open Source y entonces de proyectos de Open Architectural Design.
MIT Open Source Building Alliance Operation (OSBA) es un proyecto organizado por el departamento House_n, y funcionarà como una organización abierta y open source. El proyecto tendrà una pagína web para la generación de ideas, la evaluación técnica de las recomendaciones OSBA, y las observaciones y comentarios del público. Llevaran a cabo la investigación investigadores universitarios y los miembros afiliados a OSBA, desarrollando, creando y probando prototipos, y desarrollando entornos de prueba.

Se trata de un proyecto bien organizado, que se interesa justamente y claramente los aspectos de la personalización en masa y la posibilidad de permitir la modificación de los hogares a través del tiempo.
Además, hay que señalar como este proyecto trate también temas importantes como la
Inoltre, bisogna segnalare come questo progetto tratti anche argomenti importanti come la generación distribuida (aquí podeis encontrar una introducción) y como se pueda llevar a la practica en los edificios que se construiran en futuro.
Espero que este proyecto se enterese también de casas pasivas, tecnologís low-tech y processos, materiales y business sostenibles.

Este proyecto es una clara señal de la propagación de los principios Open Peer-to-Peer en diferentes áreas de diseño que estamos viendo en esta temporada. Estamos aún en una etapa en la que la construcción de la comunidad todavía no se ha investigado y probado mucho, y es aquí que la metodología de diseño Open Peer-to-Peer Design y el proyecto openp2pdesign.org , pueden encontrar una aplicación muy importante.

The goal of the Open Source Building Alliance is to develop key components of a more responsive model for creating places of living where: (1) Developers become integrators and alliance builders to offer tailored solutions to individuals, (2) Architects design design-engines to efficiently create thousands of unique environments, (3) Manufacturers agree on interface standards and become tier-one suppliers of components, (4) Builders become installers and assemblers, and (5) Customers (home buyers) become “designers” at the center of the process by receiving personalized information about design, products, and services at the point of decision.¹

Rather than any singular overriding design or vision, this new model aims to adopt what is basically a flexible, mass-customization home design system — one that gives homeowners themselves the tools to design their own living spaces. Think Apple and Dell instead of Toll Brothers.

“The future of housing is really much more of an industrial design process than a craft,” says Kent Larson, an architect and director of the House_n Research Consortium and the Open Source Building Alliance (OSBA) at MIT.

“Ultimately, we’re moving toward an open source (home design) system that’s very distributed. The end user will be empowered with web-based tools and configurators to construct something unique and singular.”²

Under this new DIY design model, architects don’t actually design houses anymore, he says. Instead, they’ll simply provide the tools that allow people to build their own. Similarly, manufacturers will be transformed into tier one suppliers and builders will become the assemblers. Like today’s consumer electronics industry, the system as a whole will be connected with standards to ensure quality and drive down prices.³

In drawing inspiration from the electronics industry, it’s important to note that there will be one major difference in building future homes: turnover. Rather than the planned obsolesce that dominates the CE industry, people will want the homes they build or renovate to last.

As such, upgradability will become even more important as future houses are built. Inevitably, newer, improved materials will emerge. So like swapping out your hard drive on your laptop or upgrading its memory, the home of the future will also be built with the assumption that newer materials will be incorporated over its lifetime.⁴

The MIT Open Source Building Alliance (OSBA) explores this premise:
A web of cross-industry relationships, and tools that allow individuals to craft their physical and digital environment – directly connecting manufacturers to customers – will lead to an explosion of creative energy and path to market for innovative products.⁵

Based on well-established principles of modularity – and paralleling recent developments in the automobile, ship building, and electronics industry – Open Source Building is a strategy developed by the MIT House_n research group
This allows building designers to concentrate primarily on the unique programmatic and environmental context of a building, and allows individual occupants to focus on tailoring their environment according to needs and values. In doing so, the additional cost, risk, and coordination errors associated with “one-off,” highly engineered complex structures are avoided.⁶ for the mass-customization of responsive buildings using modular physical/logical components (rather that the labor-intensive, craftbased approach of conventional construction). It separates a building into a chassis (providing structure, power, communication, etc.), and masscustomized modules (for interior fit-out, exterior facades, electronics, communication, etc.). Component design, engineering, and integration are at the system level.

Tags: Architectural Design, Distributed Generation, High-tech, Mass-customization, Technology