Earlier this year, we reported that 2016 Pritzker Prize winner Alejandro Aravena announced that his practice, ELEMENTAL, released four of their social housing designs available to the public for open source use. A recent article published by Urbanisms in beta discusses what exactly “open source use” means to the architecture world, and how we may see these designs applied to projects in the future.
According to the ELEMENTAL’s website, the designs were released to present an “open source that we will be able to rule out one more excuse for why markets and governments don’t move in this direction to tackle the challenge of massive rapid urbanization." Yet Urbanisms in beta states that although the drawing files are available to download, it doesn’t quite amount to "open source urbanism."
"We would like to take this opportunity to sketch out some of the divergences, but also potential openings, between Elemental’s idealization of open source urbanism and a more realistic implementation," explains Urbanisms in beta.
Read about Urbanisms in beta opinion on the future of ELEMENTAL's "open source plans", here.
