John Habraken first articulated the principles of open building in his book Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, published in Dutch in 1961 and in English in 1972 and 1999, and in many other languages.
[5] A number of other books have been published specifically on the subject, dozens of technical reports have been produced in several languages, open building is referred to in countless books, scholarly papers, dissertations, and articles in professional journals, and in-depth country reports and studies have emerged in Finland, the Netherlands, the US and Japan.
Residential Open Building [6] was published in 2000, telling in more detail about the pioneering projects and the principles underlying their implementation.
[8] This group was formed in 1996, under the auspices of the CIB (International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction).
Members of the CIB W104 come from many countries including the US, the Netherlands, the UK, Iran, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.
The most recent conference in the US (2008) focused on education, and included an international student competition, with winners from Korea, China, Singapore and the USA.
Since the turn of the 21st century, a number of developments in various countries indicate that open building is no longer a speculative idea of a few pioneer practitioners and theorists.
The first appearance and subsequent evolution of shopping centers and office buildings progressed pragmatically, as a response to new realities, led by real estate developers and business entities of all kinds.
New examples of housing in less-developed economies, designed by professionals to be incrementally upgraded in a user-controlled process, come to light in Chile, Mexico, and South Africa.
These pressures are forcing all parties to reconsider and realign their procurement and investment practices, their design methods, and their regulatory systems.
In mass-consumer societies, attitudes toward the sphere of control exercised by inhabitants in the making and transformation of environments are changing, vis-à-vis the role of large corporations, governments and communities.
The idea that investments should consider long-term asset value is also forcing all parties to learn to make buildings–especially but not limited to multi-occupant buildings – that can adjust as technologies, social patterns, and preferences–both individual and community – continue to evolve.
Around the world, old office buildings that have retained their social and economic value are converted to residential occupancy, after being “gutted” to prepare them for new uses and layouts.
Hospital clients can no longer afford to let short-term functional programs drive facilities procurement methods and investment decisions.
As such, they present technical, economic, political and cultural questions that go beyond the architectural discourse that tends to emphasize the special case, formal gymnastics, and the self-expression of the designer or client.
[12] Open building implementation also implies new business models for the delivery of fit-out as integrated design-build packages, serving the consumer market.