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The Magazine of Architecture and Design

THE M

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March 2010WWW.METROPOLISMAG.COM

USA $5.95 | CANADA $5.95

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Sustainable PRODUCT GUIDE / MIT’s CAR of the FUTURE

ECIALODU TSSU

COV_03_10_spineOK.indd 1 2/17/10 11:09:01 AM

The open-source movement is no longer just about software. The collaborative, nonproprietary approach to writing computer code is now being used to create everything from MP3 players and

The open-source model has begun to make inroads into the world of industrial design. cell phones to electric guitars. Companies publish all diagrams and instructions online but also sell the physical products (at a markup) as self-assembly kits. Now, the Belgian designer Thomas Lommée

OpenStructures invites users to contribute designs for parts in an online open-source forum.

86 METROPOLISMAG.COM View student projects designed using the OpenStructures system. Photo by Kristof Vrancken

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Now an innovative new program attempts to bring that ethos to the scale of buildings.The parts shown here were designed by different people using a common grid. Some of the pieces were used in a bike, others in a kitchen system.

byBelindaLanks

is building a central database of plans that, at least theoretically, could be tapped to construct just about anything—even full-scale architecture.

Called OpenStructures, or OS, Lommée’s

initiative began in 2007 as a postgraduate project in green design at Toronto’s Institute Without Boundaries. One of the fundamentals of sustain-ability, he concluded, was modularity: if an object

Metropolis 03.2010 87

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4 x 4–cm. squares

Parts Components Structures Superstructures

Lommée modeled his project on the the human body—the ultimate modular system—from a cell (a square) to the entire organism (a superstructure).

is made of standard parts, and one of those parts breaks, it should be easily replaced. Likewise, the product should be modified according to changing needs. “We thought, What if we made a modular system that is designed by everybody who uses it?”

OS invites designers from all over the world to upload 3-D drawings of basic parts to an online warehouse, where anyone can access them. From those plans, users then build compo-nents (a sink, for instance), join components to form a system (a kitchen), and assemble systems into structures (a house). For all the pieces to fit together like Lego bricks, they must conform to a standard geometrical template, a 4 x 4–centimeter grid that acts as a common language or “open-source code.”

Unlike other open-hardware endeavors, the OS designs aren’t

for sale (yet), but Lommée does have a concrete plan in the works: a proposed community center in the outskirts of Lu-bumbashi, the second-largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It would provide residential quarters, a school, a hospital, and a marketplace for 300 people living under one rainwater-collecting roof. Designed in collaboration with the Brussels Cooperation, an architects’ collective, the structure is made of components that follow the OS grid, including a universal joint that secures any available construction material—wood, bamboo, or steel—regardless of its shape. In addition to the core building, the scheme calls for a public work-shop where tinkerers can assemble additional structures, also using the grid. “The center is an open puzzle,” Lommée says. “The bearing structure is given, but the infill will be designed and built by the community.”

The larger goal of OS is to stimulate a shift in how we regard the stu! around us. Rather than seeing products as defined ob-jects, Lommée hopes, designers will begin to think of them as iterations. “Designers tend to look at an object and judge it for what it is—we like it or we don’t like it,” Lommée says. “In an open system, we look at an object and imagine what it could be-come, how we could make it better by adding, subtracting, re-placing components.” That’s a tall order in a society based on planned obsolescence. But he’s encouraged by what he has seen in the classroom, where two of his students used the same parts to construct a sunscreen and then a desk lamp. “We see an object not as an end result,” he says, “but as a version.” /

Mrs. Ddesigns another component

Company Adesigns the joints

Designer Bdesigns a component

Architect Cdesigns the frame

Customer Fputs everything together

Mr. Edesigns the connections

One shared geometrical grid

An OpenStructures object is the product of multiple contributors.

SCRIPT CHAIR

Parts designed according to the OS grid can be combined into components, like this chair by Lucas Maassen. MODULAR

KITCHEN

In order for all the parts to be compatible with one another, they must conform to a standard 4 x 4–centimeter grid.

Components may then be arranged into more complex structures, such as this modular kitchen. The entire kitchen is based on the OS grid.

THE GRID

THE POSSIBILITIES Cells Tissue Organs Systems Organisms

88 METROPOLISMAG.COM Photos by Kristof Vrancken

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KATANGA PROVINCE CASE STUDY HOUSE

Designed by the Brussels Cooperation and Eind-hoven students using the OS system, a proposed community center in the Democratic Republic of the Congo would have living quarters, a hospital, and a marketplace for 300 residents. The bear-ing structure would be donated, but the com-munity would design and build the infill in a public workshop.

An integral part of the building is a universal joint, which can accommodate virtually any available construc-tion material, regardless of shape.

Modular components (here, a sink and its base) become integrated into a system. Multiple systems then come together in a grand scheme for a house (what Lommée calls a “superstructure”).

B U I L D I N G C O M P O N E N TS

KIT OF PARTS Metropolis 03.2010 89

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