Open Source House

Summary

Sustainable and affordable housing in urban areas; that’s the challenge! Before 2020 OS-house wants to build 100.000 houses, to provide better living conditions in low-income countries. The Open Source House project started with a challenging competition for architects and students all around the world to create a sustainable, flexible and locally embedded one family house to be built in Ghana. The competition resulted in an online community of more than 3200 members and 250 designs created by people from 45 different countries. The winning design, "Emerging Ghana", will be built in Cape Coast, Ghana as a pilot project. Currently all the design entries can be found on the OS-House platform free to be shared, improved and implemented. This offers a wide variety of sustainable designs and continuous open source product development, from which everyone can benefit. The OS-House project will continue with other design competitions, starting a viable social business and developing the OS-House platform. To be updated with the latest news, visit www.os-house.org.

Location	Netherlands
Start date	01.03.2008
End date	31.12.2012
Goal / issue	Contribute to more sustainable housing 1. less waste 2. less CO2 emission and energy saving 3. less transport of construction material 4. strengthening of local economies 5. increase the life-cycle of construction materials 6. local trade by exchange of elements
Contact person	Walter aan de Wiel

Description

OS-house wants to make worldwide knowledge and creativity regarding architecture and sustainability accessible for a large group of people. We want to contribute to enhance the living conditions in developing countries while at the same time reduce the negative impact of building. OS-house aims to use a system for architects consisting of 8 principles that make the exchange of construction elements possible. The elements will be designed with local materials and for the local climate; every designer can create a sustainable design or enhance an existing design. In this way the quality and intelligence can improve continuously. The project was initiated by the young architect Vincent van der Meulen, who now cooperates with Enviu to make it happen.

Watch the introduction video on: www.os-house.org

Targets

We want to start a project that:
-inspires and involves young entrepreneurial people worldwide in the development of the OS-House concept;
-contributes to enhance the living conditions of home owners in developing countries;
-on the long term: convince real estate corporations and construction firms to adopt the OS-House philosophy of building.

-On the long term: convince real estate corporations and contruction firms to adopt the OShouse philosophy of building.