Open Building
URL = http://www.open-building.org/
Description
'Open Building is an approach to the design of buildings that is recognized internationally to represent a new wave in architecture, but a new wave with roots in the way ordinary built environment grows, regenerates and achieves wholeness. Those advocating an open building approach recognize something quite unremarkable but something that nevertheless needs to be made explicit: that both stability and change are realities in contemporary built environment. Buildings - and the neighborhoods they occupy - are not static artifacts even during the most stable times, and during times of social and technical upheaval need adjustment in some measure to remain attractive, safe and useful.
Those advocating an open building approach also recognize that designing and constructing buildings involves many people, who, when reaching agreements, make distribution of responsibility a normal characteristic of the culture of building. No one decides everything, and we usually celebrate that fact while struggling to deal with the complexity it brings. And, since no one party makes all decisions when a building is first constructed nor over the course of time as the building adjusts to new needs and technical requirements, we understand the importance of organizing decision making and construction in such a way as to reduce excessive dependencies or entanglements among the parties involved. This helps in the avoidance of conflict between people and the parts of the whole they each control, and improves the chances of balancing common interests and the more individual interests of those who inhabit space.
We all know that most ordinary buildings change in large and small ways to remain useful. Many of us make a living at this, as architects, builders, bankers, regulators, and manufacturers, suppliers and distributors. We also know that, in general, the best buildings are those most able to provide capacity to changing functions, standards of use and life-style, and improved parts over time."