Open architecture

migration, citizenship and the urban renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA 1984/87

Esra Akcan.

 The book asks what would have happened if the architectural discipline and profession were shaped by a new ethics of hospitality toward the immigrant, and calls this open architecture. conceptualizes open architecture’s various types with terms such as flexibility and adaptability of form, unfinished and un- finalizable design, collectivity and collaboration, participation and democracy, and multiplicity of meaning.

Open architecture is predicated on the welcoming of a distinctly other mind or group of minds into the process of architectural design. It is associated with, for example, fexibility and adaptability of form, collectivity and collaboration, multiplicity of meaning, democracy and plurality, open-sourceable de- sign, the expansion of human rights and social citizenship, and transnational solidarity.

Few ideas contributed as much to open architecture and its dialogical potential during the social upheavals of the 1960s as the call for participation in public housing. When one reads Giancarlo de Carlo’s 1969 “Architecture’s Public,” one can measure the oppo- sition to the architectural establishment during the student movements in Europe (Figure Intro 11). Questioning architects’ submission to power and compliance with the interests of wealthy clients, de Carlo called for a fundamental change in the disci- pline’s self-defnition and audience. Who really was architecture’s public: the clients, architects themselves, or the people? “Architecture took an elite position on the side of the client rather than on the side of the user” at the expense of its own trustworthi- ness.30 “Why should architecture be credible today,” de Carlo asked, when architects served only landowners and authorities, when they restricted themselves to the tech- nical questions of the “how” rather than addressing the social and political questions of the “why,” and when the question of public housing remained unresolved while architectural education was in crisis and architectural publications were character- ized by arrogance? To improve architecture’s credibility, de Carlo suggested partici- patory design, which meant that the architect would design with users rather than for them, and process planning, which meant that participation would be initiated as an open-ended procedure in such a way that users would continue shaping their environments even after the work of the architect ended. In making a distinction be- tween the client and the user, de Carlo was suggesting that architecture ought to work for the common good rather than the particular interests of the wealthy or powerful authorities. While the expectation of change and unfnalizability of design were ideas similar to those endorsed by the Metabolists during the same period, the participa- tory design procedure that invited a direct connection with future users was another distinct form of open architecture.