Residential Open Building Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon Also available from E & FN Spon Building International Construction Alliances R.Pietroforte Construction—Craft to Industry G.Sebestyen Construction Methods and Planning J.R.Illingworth Creating the Built Environment L.Holes Green Building Handbook T.Woolly, S.Kimmins, R.Harrison and P.Harrison Industrialized and Automatic Building Systems A.Warszawski Introduction to Eurocode 2 D.Beckett and A.Alexandrou Open and Industrialised Building A.Sarja The Idea of Building S.Groak Procurement Systems Edited by S.Rowlinson and P.McDermott Journal Building Research and Information The International Journal of Research, Development, Demonstration & Innovation To order or obtain further information on any of the above or receive a full catalogue please contact: The Marketing Department, E & FN Spon, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Tel: 0171 842 2400; Fax: 0171 842 2303 Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon Residential Open Building Stephen Kendall Housing Futures Institute, Ball State University and Jonathan Teicher Building Community, The American Institute of Architects International Council for Building Research Studies and Documentation London and New York Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon First published 2000 by E & FN Spon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by E & FN Spon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 E & FN Spon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 2000 E & FN Spon All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Residential Open Building/Stephen Kendall & Jonathan Teicher p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.Dwellings–Design and construction2. Open plan (Building) I. Teicher, Jonathan. II. Title TH4812.K45 2000 690’ .8–dc21 99-33925 CIP ISBN 0-419-23830-1 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-05676-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-22052-8 (Glassbook Format) Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon Contents What is residential Open Building? Acknowledgments PART ONE A RESIDENTIAL OPEN BUILDING PRIMER 1 Introduction 1.1 The Open Building movement 1.2 Trends toward Open Building 1.3 How Open Building works 2 Incubators of Open Building 2.1 The Netherlands 2.2 Japan 3 A brief interpretive history of Open Building 3.1 From vernacular precedents to Open Building 3.2 From mass housing to Open Building 3.3 Key Open Building concepts 3.4 Defining an open architecture 3.5 Open Building strategies 3.6 Summary References Additional readings Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon PART TWO A SURVEY OF MILESTONE PROJECTS 4 Case studies Acknowledgments Additional readings Realized Open Building and related projects: a chronology PART THREE METHODS AND PRODUCTS 5 Technical overview 5.1 Changes in networked residential buildings 5.2 Open Building approaches compared 6 Methods and systems by level 6.1 Tissue level 6.2 Support level 6.3 Infill level 7 A survey of infill systems, products and companies Acknowledgments Additional readings PART FOUR ECONOMIC AND ADDITIONAL FACTORS 8 The economics of Open Building 8.1 Basic economic principles 8.2 Tsukuba Method 8.3 Buyrent housing concept Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon 9 Additional trends toward Open Building 9.1 Trends in the organizational sphere 9.2 Summary Acknowledgments Additional readings PART FIVE SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 10 Open Building activity by nation 10.1 The Netherlands 10.2 Japan 10.3 Additional nations 11 The future of Open Building 11.1 Global trends 11.2 Building the future 11.3 Conclusion Appendices A Realized Open Building and related projects by nation B The SAR Tissue Method C International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) Glossary Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon What is residential Open Building? Throughout North America—and increasingly, throughout the world— non-residential buildings are constructed in an Open Building (OB) approach. Office and retail developers, their design and construction teams, and the associated regulators, lenders, owners, tenants, and product manufacturers are reorganizing the building process. They routinely work according to principles and methods that have developed over recent decades in direct response to extraordinary and accelerating change in the shaping of environment. Regardless of style, typology or construction, commercial base buildings are now customarily built without predetermined interior layout. Upon leasing, demising walls and then interior partitioning are added, as spaces are fitted out to suit individual tenants. Each tenant may install unique interior spaces, equipment and systems to suit organizational and technical needs. When older commercial buildings are ‘revalued,’ demolition exposes the existing building shell, which is then retrofitted with upgraded facade and interior systems. Even in ‘build-to-suit’ office facilities, base building construction is made as generic as possible: its long-term value is increased by providing capacity for changing requirements, including eventual tenant turnover and future sale. Developments in commercial construction are now moving into the residential sector. In Europe, Asia and North America, residential Open Building principles, variously known as OB, S/I (Support/Infill), Skeleton Housing, Supports and Detachables, Houses that Grow, etc.—are now spear-heading the reorganization of the design and construction of residential buildings in parallel ways. In many cases, residential Open Building is based on the reintroduction of principles intrinsic to sustainable historic environmentsaround the world. These have been Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon reinterpreted and updated to harness benefits of state-of-the-art industrial production, emerging information technologies, improved logistics, and changing social values and market structures. Residential Open Building is a new multi-disciplinary approach to the design, financing, construction, fit-out and long-term management processes of residential buildings, including mixed-use structures. Its goals include creating varied, fine-grained and sustainable environment, and increasing individual choice and responsibility within it. In Open Building, responsibility for decision-making is distributed on various levels. New product interfaces and new permitting and inspection processes disentangle subsystems toward the ends of simplifying construction, reducing conflict, affording individual choice, and promoting overall environmental coherence. Residential OB thus combines a set of technical tools with a deliberate social stance toward environmental intervention. Residential Open Building practices are rapidly evolving throughout the world. As new consumer-oriented infill systems appear and become more widely available, governments, housing and finance corporations and manufacturers are joining developers, sustainability advocates and academics in endorsing and advancing a new open architecture. From improved decision-making and increased choice, to standardized interfaces between building systems that are compatible and sustainable, the broadly-shared benefits of the ‘new wave in building’ (Proveniers and Fassbinder, n.d.) are increasingly in evidence throughout the world. Copyright 2000 E & FN Spon Acknowledgments The word in language is half someone else’s. It become’s ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker populates it… Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that a speaker gets words!) but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other peoples concrete texts, serving other peoples intentions… —M.M.BAKHTIN, THE DIALOGIC IMAGINATION Residential Open Building practice continues to grow. Groups and individuals far too numerous to mention have contributed to residential OB as it has taken root throughout the world. They have built projects, funded and conducted research, written, taught and organized in support of an open architecture. This book, stimulated by the formation of an international group focussed on the implementation of Open Building, is the first to chart the world-wide developments. It lends its voice to join in an ongoing story-telling process, toward the end of enriching the practice of a people-centered open architecture and the reorganization of the building process. In the architecture and allied building industries of many nations, formal and deliberate Open Building in project development, design and implementation, in product manufacture, construction and systems installation, and in the management of real estate assets, has unevenly entered the mainstream of discourse and practice. Like the term ‘Open Building,’ the movement’s pioneers, practices and principles sometimes remain unknown. Regrettably, this book can acknowledge only some of the trailblazers; and it presents only some realized