Open models are now famous for being adopted in many fields outside software development, and we can see this as a proof of their importance and a clear sign of their success. One of the most interesting fields where we witness the adoption of Open models is the Design one, where we can find cases of open web design (OpenDesigns, Open Source Web Design, Open Web Design), open product design (Openmoko, VIA OpenBook, Bug Labs, Zoybar), open meta-design processes, and even open architectural design.

Even if slowly, an usually competitive and ego-driven professional community like the design one is starting to realize what are the potentials for the collaboration and sharing of Open Design initiatives. The design discipline realizes the importance of the creativity that also lies outside its community of practitioners, the distributed creativity that can be found within the whole society.
This process of discovering distributed creativity is followed by a more difficult process of building the distributed manufacturing system that will back Open Design initiatives. Right now, we are in a moment where we are studying how a distributed creativity system can design and how a distributed manufacturing system can manufacture according to open and peer-to-peer models and principles. These two trends complete each other and are necessary in order to spread Open models further toward an Open society.

One of the main reasons we can find such experiments right now is mass-customization: Open Design initiatives represent a promising way to put in practice mass-customization activities that really involve the end-user and give him/her a strong position in defining the product/service. In this way, we can generate direct value and also an indirect whole ecosystem of economic actors (and therefore more economic value). This is the case of the MIT researech about Open Source Buildings (or Open Architectural Design): MIT Open Source Building Alliance Operation (OSBA).
This project was firs presented with the paper written by Larson K., Intille S., McLeish T.J., Beaudin J., Williams R. E.: “Open source building — reinventing places of living” and published in BT Technology Journal, Vol 22 No 4, October 2004.
It is a project run by the House_n department, and it will operate as an open source organization. A website have been established for idea generation, technical evaluation of OSBA recommendations, and public comment. OSBA members and affiliated academic researchers will engage in research to develop, test, and establish prototypes and test beds.
It is a very well structured project, and it addresses in a clear way the mass-customization aspects and the opportunity to generate economic value and also let people modify their homes through time. Also, we should mention that they are addressing a very important issue such as distributed generation and how it could be implemented in future buildings. Therefore it could be an interesting project also for the generation of a P2P energy grid.

This is the whole scenario behind the project:

• Scenario part 1 — developers as integrators
  Residential developers now specialise in the process of acquisition, financing, and an increasingly complex public approval processes. They form business relationships with competing ‘builder-integrators,’ who manage the process of delivering individually tailored homes.
• Scenario part 2 — design, configuration and industry standards
  Multifamily buildings are the first to adopt ‘open source building’ strategies. With a lengthy approval process, buildings must be designed long before an apartment buyer enters the process. To decrease risk and increase sale prices, developers now separate the building into two components: an open loft base building ‘chassis’ that efficiently integrates the essential services of a building, and customised ‘infill,’ configured by the user at the point of sale, fabricated to order and quickly connected to the chassis.
• Scenario part 3 — fabrication and installation
  When a design is complete and the buyer transaction executed, a description of each system is transmitted to the integrator’s assembly factory. The integrator receives just-in-time deliveries of the required components from manufacturers and distributors, taking advantage of supply chain management tools similar to those developed in the automotive industry. With standardised connections, and tighter dimensional tolerances, the fit-out takes no more than 10 days. Although the systems of the home are functionally integrated, they are also carefully disentangled so that each can be changed during design or use without affecting the performance of the larger system. Most devices and systems have IP addresses and communicate wirelessly or by powerline carrier, allowing, for example, lighting control to be made and changed during the occupancy of the home.

The main architectural design concept behind this project is modularity; this concept let designers separate a building into a chassis (providing structure, power, communication, etc.), and mass-customized modules called infill (for interior fit-out, exterior facades, electronics, communication, etc.). Component design, engineering, and integration are at the system level. This means that only the infill part can be modified by the users, leaving the more structural and complex part to the architects.

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
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.

Eric Hunting adds that it is a very significant initiative, given the context of the current housing-derived meltdown:

“The recent global economic crash, centered as it is on the collapse of the housing finance system, presents a great opportunity for global change, The conventional western industrial model for housing has utterly failed and it is simply no longer a viable proposition to house oneself through life-long debt rationalized on the delusional assumption of an ‘investment’ premised on perpetual property value growth. All across the western world people are in a state of abject terror, succumbing in the millions to radical changes of fortunes not of their making and whose causality they scarcely comprehend, screaming for a better way of securing the staples of life. And this better way must develop from the bottom-up, starting with the way homes and communities are built and how that determines the means by which they can be financed and that investment managed over time. The now failed system of home finance has been premised on a specific choice of building technology co-created with it; a technology cultivated for its ability to maximize virtual value of property through the volume of labor invested in it, binding that abstracted value to the land by what was built on top of it through its lack of adaptiveness and demountability -the economic consequence of the delusion of architectural permanence. A Ponzie scheme of lumber and nails. This has to change. We must disconnect the value of land from the value of structures to economically stabilize them both and radically alter the labor quotient of construction to stop the virtual inflation of its value, bringing it as close as possible to the level of its material resource overhead, potentially leveraged by casual sweat-equity. It’s immoral for the staples of existence to be debt-dependent. Civilized people should not be confined in mobility by the fungibility of their debts as this is nothing more than indentured servitude. We must awaken to the reality of the tragic usury surrounding us -consuming us- and end it. This can start with the home.

I think a concerted effort toward open source architecture, focused on housing and community, now has an opportunity to break the backs of the hegemonies that have run us, and the global economy, aground and help to cultivate that new way the society now desperately needs and demands. The time is right. The tools are at hand. We just need to gather together those minds that can focus beyond the panic and get to work. And I think this can start with a simple question; what if houses were designed/made like computers and evolved at the same pace?”