<Cesar Harada> “Dissertation” comes from the Latin dissertātiō, meaning “discourse”. Discourse (L. discursus, “running to and from”) means either “written or spoken communication or debate” or “a formal discussion or debate”. Open architecture is a lively and complex subject, the tradition of dissertation gives great justice to the subject
in the form of a discussion. First hand informations are also invaluable in the making of a true definition.

This dissertation is the result of many discussions and reflections : a large part of the text are extracts, and many times, they are so clear, they require no commenting. In that sense, I consider myself more of a contributor and moderator than an author.

The people I have interviewed represent a very wide range of ages, professions and beliefs. I imagine open architecture as a new subject and found no pure specialist nor precise publication at hand. The people I have interviewed are either specialists at the leading edge of their science or daily practitioners.
No one alone holds expertise about open architecture, it is a social construction.
Open Architecture is the process, a living idea.

All the dialogs are extracts from interviews I have video-recorded later to be produced as a video documentary. Peoples voices definitely come first, but I didn’t exclude books, instead, I invited authors to participate in the liveliness of our discussions. For that reason, the list  of contributors and the bibliography are one and same document, using the same syntax.


The syntax I use is a simplified academiXML, of XML (Extensible Markup Language). Markup languages have been in use for centuries, and in recent years have also been used as codes in computer typesetting and word-processing systems. For me it allows a great density and flexibility of editing, easy to read for human, parsable by machines.

Since June 2009 the text of this documents has been on-line as a google doc page at http://openarchitecture.cc
It is also updated in there and free to download as beta at any time. Every contributors was given the possibility to edit what they previously said, add content in this open editable document.
The open_architecture is printed on standard a4 paper and presented in a ring file, so you can change the order of the pages, add or remove chapters, add more content to it.