<Cesar Harada> The term “open architecture” has been used in several fields : computer hardware and programming, social sciences, philosophy, biology, engineering, architecture, urbanism, ecology, economy, advertising etc. but its general meaning remains very unclear while being an apparent subject of growing interest and controversy.

No cross-disciplinary study yet exists today, and before the term is overly misused or exploited as a commercial labelling, attempting to define the concept is necessary. I am tackling the risk that general public misunderstands open architecture as a style, which it is not. The consequence would be the crystallization (death) of the living idea itself.
I try to describe open architecture as a set of internal forces rather a set of limiting characteristics or dogma.
I explain why open architecture is not a revolutionary concept but rather a progressive politics based on compromising. I try to sketch a legal framework that would permit the happening of such architecture and propose a new standard for a beta-architecture, with a new distribution of legal responsibilities.

I suggest that open architecture isn’t necessarily just one type of building, but that open architecture contains all buildings into one architectural system that allows incoherence, variety, discontinuity. As much as the building in the context of the city participates in the urbanistic plan, the totality or the man-organised world
(buildings, political organisations, social activities, intellects) can be articulated within the open architecture super ensemble computation.
So this dissertation considers open architecture on two simultaneous levels : open architecture as context and open architecture as object.

Many people might think open architecture refers to an aesthetic : plan libre (Le Corbusier 1926) a building which structure is made of thin vertical pillars supporting large open plane allowing a free organization of space with wall separations.
Architecture has made progress since, and open architecture is not only the product but the whole process, from the spiritual pre-requisites, to the fabrication of the philosophy in an ethical, legal, political and economic framework. Open architecture is the social computing construction in choreographic action, cutting
and assembling raw and complex materials into a novel family of architecture.


Shigeru Ban, Curtain Wall House, Itabashi-Ku, Tokyo.

For the specialists, open architecture is too often a dogma, a set of limiting rules. Instead I see open architecture as a set of constructive forces: not limiting external regulations; but an internal logic that generates an expanding participative construction.

I’m trying to demonstrate that open architecture has its own evolving philosophy, multiples processes, that offer radical new methods of investigation and production. We need open architecture because it allows a lot of new solutions and combinations, and open architecture needs to be given more solid grounds and
perspectives.


http://house.propositions.org.uk/
“Reconfigurable house”, 2008, Aether, Hasegawa, Sjölén, Haque, ITT Tokyo.
 
For me, it is the opportunity to draw inspiration from the dialog with many other professional practices (religious, philosophers, politicians, homeless, lawyers, economists, architects, choreographer, biologists, neurocognitivists...) to create designs, architectures, social ventures and designing design systems.
To understand the subject from the inside and be at the heart of my subject, the only way was to work with this theory : I met, and worked at the two architectural agencies that I consider to be at the forefront of the open architecture theory and practice : the Open Source Space (http://o-s-s.org)  in Madrid with Angel
Borrego, and the Haque Design + Research (http://haque.co.uk) in London with Usman Haque where I was  working as designer & researcher.


http://opensailing.net

I am now applying this theoretical research of open_architecture in my Royal College of Art final project ‘open_sailing’ which is a very ambitious and innovative architecture project involving more than 40 designers, engineer, biologists : an inhabitable self-sustaining ocean farm that drifts in the safest waters of the world.

The ultimate value of this document is to contribute and expand  general understanding and of what open architecture can be.


http://urbanspacestation.org
I am the "human control system" of the “Urban Space Station”, 2008 Natalie Jeremijenko & Angel Borrego, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain.