OPENBUILDING.CO
BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

OpenBuilding.co is a group of Dutch architects, engineers and developers dedicated to extending the lifespan of buildings, significantly lowering the ecological footprint and creating healthy communities. Open Buildings are flexible, adaptable, circular and resilient. With distinct architecture, they contribute to a dynamic urban context. The infill is co-created with future users to encourage and consolidate inclusion and belonging.

Open Building advocates a physical division of building components that have different life cycles. In doing so, Open Buildings incorporate not only flexibility to move with social tendencies, climate change and new regulations, but also form the basis for a circular construction economy.

The support represent the most permanent parts of the building, like the structure and can be seen as a bookcase. The infill represents the adaptable part of the building, or in other words the books. - N. John Habraken (1961)

The task for policymakers, architects and developers for the coming decades is clear: we need large numbers of sustainable homes. The Founding Partners of OpenBuilding.co acknowledge that ambition: together we must work on circular, flexible and adaptable structures and anchor them well to the urban context and society. The principles of Open Building offer strategies and scenarios to work towards open and dynamic neighborhoods, affordable and comfortable housing and building innovation and circularity.

Read more about the Open Building principles and our manifesto here.

The ideas of the Founding Partners of OpenBuilding.co find their origins in the legacy of Professor N. John Habraken, who created the basis for Open Building with his book De Dragers en de Mensen (The Supports and the People in English). Habraken introduced the term ‘support’ (or: base building) and infill (customized functionalities). Habraken promoted a radical shift in decision-making for mass-customization in housing and a new way to harness the power of industrial production. In the mid-1980s, the term Open Building was first coined by the SAR (Stichting Architecten Research - Foundation for Architects Research).

Im Memoriam
the father of Open Building

Catch the sun or a fresh breath while taking the Open Building Audio Tour Amsterdam

OPEN BUILDING case studies
& RESEARCH

OpenBuilding.co will host a growing library of the Dutch residential Open Building stock. We will document and discuss the esthetics and communal value of these living buildings.

Additional research will be carried out in collaboration with students of the University of Applied Sciences of Amsterdam and students of the TU Delft in the Open Building Academy.

We are currently documenting the following case studies: BlackJack, CiWoCo, Fenix 1, Frame, Het Bosbad, Juf Nienke, Object One, MaMa One, New West, Patch22, Schetsblok, Silodam, Stories, Superlofts, Top-Up.

OPEN BUILDING legacy

“Supports are part of the public domain and are permanent, while the infill belongs to the individual and is changeable. Participation and freedom of choice for the user is the key objective.” - N. John Habraken (1961)

Dutch architect Habraken is the initiator and ground breaker for Open Bouwen, the Dutch name for Open Building. Habraken advocates a vital architecture that gives shape to everyday life and allows for change. He makes a clear distinction between the support and the infill of buildings and emphasizes that this distinction is not only technical in nature, but more importantly focused on personal influence.

By initiating the Habraken Foundation, we aim to safeguard his legacy and build on it, using the platform to share knowledge and organise events and connect professionals and academics who share our mission.
OpenBuilding.co is part of an international network of practitioners, researchers and government agencies who are applying the Open Building approach in many project types.