THE STATES OF OPENNESS: AN EVALUATION OF OPEN SOURCE CULTURE IN DESIGN PRACTICES

We are in the era of open source; a concept term which was borrowed from computer technologies and software development, is now gradually associated with design and architectural practices. Within its broader aspects, open source does not only cover distribution and fabrication of the products that fit in certain specifications and scales. Indeed it responds to the needs of change varying from the organisational structures of design firms to authorship of designers and the rights on their products. This indicates a paradigm shift in related fields of praxis. It could be claimed that we are negotiating with this new situation of open sourcing architecture and design, possibly through premising cases. This study principally aims to understand the turbid pre-paradigm shift situation by questioning the various constructions of openness in design fields. The constructions of openness are relating with other questions on the degree of openness, their beneficiers and actors, the accessibility conditions, the type and the amount of shared information. Therefore a categoric approach has been adopted in order to gain insight on the DNA of openness. From a transdisciplinary standpoint for the research, architecture related cases are taken into the consideration in the foreground and cases from various fields of design practice are investigated in the background. In order to gain insights and to develop a critical position on this topic, the structure of the study is built upon four main conceptual classifications: proposals of pre-internet era, ideational, object oriented and strategy oriented proposals. Proposals of pre-internet era are selected among design and architecture related proposals which problematized akin issues and attained conceptual connotations of open source mentality and culture which had been distributed via their contemporary mediums. Whole Earth Catalog is a medium of 'access to tools' considered as the Internet of its time. The Catalog fuels and funnels its community to think further on dwelling and landuse problems, industry and craft, communication, nomadism and sustainability issues of the world. Having different aspects, the two prominent actors, Victor Papanek, a designer and the author of 'Design For The Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change' and architect Yona Friedman, author of 'Toward a Scientific Architecture', both dealt with democratization of design and the real needs of final users. Concurrently, product designer Enzo Mari was concerned that design processes need to be open, hence in his Autoprogettazione catalog, design documentations of project was open sourced in the form of a printed material. Preminent ideational proposals comprise the initial conceptive works, which relate design and architecture to the borrowed principles of open source software mentality. Translation of open source mentality to the physical world of design disciplines is a layered and complex issue, as it does not only cover the intellectual property rights. A consideration on the rights of embodiment is also required. Applications of open source in creative industries bring along redefinition of legal framework on intellectual property rights. This causes a transition towards alternative models such as Creative Commons and TAPR OHL. Preminent object oriented proposals comprise the structures, which benefit from the existing open source knowledge and fabrication technology with the purpose of immediate objectivation and continious modification. Platforms like Opendesk and WikiHouse are the examples of such structures, creating their own developer communities, open sharing design documents and accumulating knowledge while promoting local fabrication mechanisms. Preminent strategy-oriented proposals focuse on organisational and corporate bodies, which are influenced from open source culture and initially opened up their knowhow and practice to external knowledge sources. By setting up online platforms as extensions of their corporate images, these platforms function to raise design firms' and organisations' communications with public and to establish knowledge-centric business models. These are divided into two sub groups: 'openness as an insertion of praxis' and 'praxis starting with openness'. UNStudio, a global architectural design firm, is testing open source strategy at present. The firm recently started online Knowledge Platforms up as a part of their research section on official website. Another globally renowned design and consultancy firm IDEO started up its online platform OpenIDEO a while ago with the purpose of finding design solutions together to the world's social problems. Likewise a non-profit organisation called Architecture for Humanity setted up Open Architecture Network, an open source platform and a database of projects dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design. The cases of praxis starting with openness are P2PUrbanism and PaperHouses. P2PUrbanism is an online platform dedicated to establish a medium of participatory urban planning and design on the basis of open source strategies. PaperHouses is a business model of open sourcing housing projects' design documents and an attempt for collaboration of architects and final users. Following this conceptual classification, openness degreees and configurations of the cases, their pledged and accomplished qualifications in detail are examined comperatively. Reevaluation of the cases determined according to Michel Avital's Open-X archetypes classification. Preminent proposals are discussed under three archetypes. According to their value proposition and thrust, core openness facet and prime actors, cases are disposed as open innovation, open source or open design archetypes. The value proposition and thrust characteristic of an Open-X could be distributed knowledge, distributed development or distributed manufacturing. Core openness facet determines the degree of accessibility to which something is accessible to view, modify or use. Prime actors include organizations, developer communities or consumers. Previously categorized under strategy-oriented proposals, Knowledge Platforms of Unstudio and OpenIDEO of IDEO firm are the cases approved as open innovation archetypes. Object oriented proposal WikiHouse is related to open souce archetype. Opendesk and Paperhouses are placed as the cases of open design archetypes. P2pUrbanism and Open Architecture Network platforms are concluded to have characteristics of more than one archetype and reevaluated as a hybrid category. As another part of discussion section, conditions of existing global practice within design and architectural fields are evaluated as contributing causes of open source agenda. Trans-continental commisions and multinational structures of the offieces increase the overall amount of shared information, intensify the speed of circulation and widen the area of effect. The multiciplity of architectural discourses facilitated by global networks of communication accelerates this knowledge-centric transformation of the praxis. Therefore, by opening know-hows and design processes that create permeable boundaries, the firms expect to produce superior outcome of practice from research and colaborations. In conclusion, the possibilities, capacities and responsibilities of open source architectural and design practices are discussed. As the components of a new paradigm, it indicates a potential situation that individual authorship and all rights reserved phenomenon is replaced by 'some rights reserved' alternative world of pluralist, participatory and open design, fabrication processes. Traditional doctrines of design and production, executed by industry leaders as 'from one to many distribution processes', is about change into an act of sharing and building together in a natural habitat called world wide web. In terms of capacity, open source praxis should not be seen as mere a charitable act, instead it constitutes business development strategies and design methods at times. On behalf of organizations, design firms, designers, developer communities and final users, open sourcing bears responsibilities such as prevention of abusing rights attached to shared ideas or designed products. Moreover, in the dynamic environment of redefining authorship rights and establishing a shared culture, it is another responsibility of this digital millieu to prevent free labor and violation of voluntarism. Open source concept in design and architectural practices should be naturalized as a common ground and culture embracing all actors. In a digitally-driven revolutionary environment, where in certain cases the architect or designer is no longer an individual author but almost an anonymous figure, just as the same way as vernacular practice, further questions arise: How will the education of design actors be formed? How will the chambers and occupational organisations function? How will the uniqueness of a designed object be evaluated? Pursuing a critical evaluation of openness, this study futher aims to open the way for examining such questions for future researchs.