Open Source House has a double approach, bottom up and top-down. Focused global knowledge and creativity about sustainable housing design is collected on the online platform and made available for local use and implementation. However, OS-House started by creating local commitment in Ghana and doing extensive research on social and cultural characteristics there. This included the wishes and needs of the end-user and an assessment of the current housing industry. Open Source House doesn’t force a new solution, but makes knowledge available which puts the power back in the hands of the end-users. This way they can free themselves from the limited choice that is offered to them by the market today.
Problem and goal
Rapid urbanization, wastage of resources, global warming, inefficient construction methods and unshared ideas are all part of the underlying problem that forces people to live in ways they don’t want to. These forces result in a lack of choice, along with high prized and unsustainable housing. All the technical knowledge is already available to solve these issues. The problem is to get the knowledge and creativity where it’s needed most and where the impact can be most meaningful. We need to generate choice!
Think big
For the first time modular housing systems will be used to create diversity instead of uniformity. We want to create smart, modular housing systems, with comparable and understandable designs, consisting of elements that are sustainable, flexible and affordable. All designs should be based on eight principles which are used by the Open Source House to guarantee these standards.. An online platform offers applied global knowledge of sustainable and flexible designs sensitive to specific local conditions and materials. The designs are then open to be improved and adapted to new personal needs or other local conditions. Through online and local collaboration OS-House operates simultaneously from bottom-up and top-down.
Start small
To kick of the big concept OS-House started small with a design competition. The assignment of the competition was to design a single family house for the emerging middle class in Ghana on a plot offered by the Municipality of Cape Coast. To embed OS-House in the local context in Ghana we’ve conducted extensive research and built local commitment. All information is made available on the platform. Contact and cooperation with local parties is promoted, encouraged and facilitated by the platform. The winning design(s) will be built and mark the start of something big.
Scale fast
Not only will the winners of the competition have the chance to see their designs become realized. After this first competition OS-House will continue to promote the implementation of more OS-Houses, realize more designs, organize new competitions and stimulate local parties to use designs and adapt them to their local conditions. Our goal is to realize 100.000 OS-Houses before the year 2020!
Join
Now the Ghana competition is closed the platform offers a huge diversity of sustainable designs. These form the basis for this important mission. So join the platform, get involved and make sure your design power and name are connected to this project from the start.