Editorial

Abstract

The Support and Infill concept has been generally accepted and adopted by the design disciplines as well as the construction and manufacturing industries. Support and Infill were developed as an alternative to mass housing (Habraken 1961) The author argued that mass housing made no sense because of the absence of the user as a player in the housing process. This led to all sorts ills and wasted opportunities. This was mainly a relationship problem between the inhabitant and the dwelling itself resulting in identical units in identical blocks in identical neighborhoods which never changed nor ever moved until the mass demolishers came in to make way for something better which often was ‘supports’. Overlapping with this concept, Open Building emerges describing decision making levels of the urban tissue, supports, infill and all their spatial and physical properties and components. Now Time Based Architecture (TBA) (Leupen 2005) has come to the front. It is, as the name suggests, an Architecture which does not resist change but which embraces it. It is something close to Supports and Open Building but slightly different. All Supports are TBA edifices but not all TBA edifices are Supports? To explain this it is perhaps sufficient to say here that Supports did not deal in flexibility per se but with restructuring the building industry, to re-orientate decision making and also a large amount of attention was paid to modular co-ordination. TBA addresses this but also crosses borders into high tech buildings, flexibility and explores the use of contemporary materials and the flexible nature of glass and steel construction.

Citation

Wilkinson, N. (2007), "Editorial", Open House International, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 5-6. https://doi.org/10.1108/OHI-03-2007-B0001