Olaf Gipser of Olaf Gipser Architects in conversation with Michelle Gulickx

On the north shore of the IJ river, the team of Olaf Gipser Architects works from an unassuming office building shared with several other architecture firms. The office is conveniently situated near their award-winning building Stories, a hybrid timber and resident-driven housing project. It is no coincidence that both office and housing block are located around the Buiksloterham area, Amsterdam’s boundary-pushing living lab. Founder Olaf Gipser likes to do new things and to set high ambitions. His projects and teachings are  embracing the ideas of John Habraken, a Dutch architect who in the 1960s propagated the concept of Open Bouwen. This design philosophy proposes an architecture that is user-centered, flexible, sustainable and – as Gipser convincingly argues – surprisingly contemporary.

As an architect, you are an advocate for the Open Bouwen movement that originated over sixty years ago in the Netherlands. Could you explain what this concept means, and how it came about?

General Assembly of BSH20A Collective Self-Build Group, © Rufus de Vries

Open Bouwen, which translates to “open building,” is a concept developed by Dutch architect John Habraken in the 1960s and 70s. Back in 1961, he published a book called “De dragers en de mensen” (“Supports: an Alternative to Mass Housing”, 1972) in which he criticized the state of mass housing at the time. He  saw that these construction projects set a serial, monotonous standard, without taking into account the individual needs of the inhabitants. The human factor was missing. Habraken proposed a new architectural approach: Open Bouwen. This advocates for buildings consisting of two layers: a permanent, fixed core, combined with an adaptive layer that could change over time according to the preferences and creativity of the inhabitants.

Open Bouwen emerged in the 1960s. What makes it relevant today?

Back in the day, Open Bouwen was part of a broader shift in society. Artists, designers, philosophers and writers started to include spectators, users and readers in their work. People were no longer seen as passive consumers, but as active participants in an extended creative process. This idea, in architecture, has seen a revival in recent years. For instance, since around 2010, Amsterdam has been increasingly stimulating participatory housing development. This was partly due to the economic crisis at the time, but also as a result of a changing political agenda to foster a more people-centered approach.

General Assembly of BSH20A Collective Self-Build Group

I’m part of a group of architects who, a few years ago, became interested in revitalizing Habraken’s concepts and who have setup the knowledge platform Openbuilding.co. The growing recognition of material scarcity, the problem of CO2 emissions and the climate crisis have led to new ways of thinking in architecture. How can we extend the lifespan of buildings and make them future-proof? If buildings would possess the permanent and flexible layers that Habraken promoted, redevelopment of existing structures would be much easier to achieve. We therefore advocate the principles of Open Building, also – and in particular – from the perspective of sustainability.

Your building Stories gives an idea how Open Bouwen can be put into practice today. It is the result of Collectief Particulier Opdrachtgeverschap (CPO), a form of development where residents collectively develop and manage their own housing complex. How did the project come about?

We started with a small group of people who were convinced to create a housing project together. Then, we organized meetings to find likeminded people to join our group. After a selection process organized by the municipality, we were awarded a plot of land in the Buiksloterham area of Amsterdam-Noord, which functions as a test ground for circular forms of development. We won the selection because of our mix of sustainable ambitions: to combine principles of Open Bouwen – user participation and programmatic flexibility – with an extensive usage of timber and with the integration of an ecological habitat within the building envelope.

After the joy of winning, you had to put your high ambitions into practice. That must have been demanding…

Putting it into practice was indeed challenging. For instance, we wanted to allow for flexible compartmentalization of floors and floorplans for residents. We achieved this in spatial and structural terms. But because timber construction needs special measures regarding sound insulation, technical installations for water had to be set rather fixed. In addition, striving for programmatic flexibility can lead to jurisdictional questions. Spatially, structurally and technically, it is possible in Stories to alter the subdivision of floors even after the building is completed. But it offers a lot of legal complexity. In short: you have to think about many things from the beginning of the process, from larger technical and legal questions, to things as small as the number of mailboxes you install in the hallway!

What are the benefits of this participatory way of building?

I think the process of co-creation is very, very nice. Developing a building as a group of residents adds a whole new dimension to the design process. You grow together from being a passive inhabitant of the city to an active co-maker that adds something new to the neighbourhood. But it also offers challenges: you have to be able to put egos aside and make collaborative decisions. To become a good CPO group, you have to have a decision-making process based on collective intelligence: even if people have no experience with designing or building a house, they bring useful expertise or a valid opinion that will make the building better. Everybody brings something to the table.

In the process of developing Stories, you acted as architect and future inhabitant at the same time. Did that require you to use new skills or approaches?

In a process like this, you need to be a little bit more humble and allow for others to share their ideas. To make sure our high ambitions could be realized, we created a design that was the result of a collective vision, not just the sum of individual ideas. It really is thanks to our group, who shared a collective vision and really stuck to our joint ambition, and to the contractor, whom we had on board from the very first moment, that we made it work.

In a country like the Netherlands, there’s a need to house more and more people in cities. At the same time, we need to take biodiversity and climate change into account. How do you balance the two?

Indeed, our cities undergo a double densification: they are increasingly attractive for humans and for non-humans such as plants and animals. Biodiversity in the larger Dutch cities is today higher than on the agriculturally maintained countryside, a phenomenon valid for many European cities. So the scarce space of the city is a shared one among people, and between humans and non-humans. This poses new questions for architecture as a notoriously anthropocentric discipline.

Amsterdam has been quite early to embrace policies promoting biodiversity, nature inclusivity and rain and climate proof measures. And in our designs we try to foster interaction between human and non-human residents, a synthesis of architecture and vegetation. We designed our project Stories as a ‘shelf’ that provides habitats for humans, plants and animals alike. Floating gardens are integrated into the balconies to provide shelter for people, insects and birds together. At the same time, we reformulate the façade as a microclimatic, bio-architectural transition zone between outside and inside.

In addition to your work as an architect, you are also a professor at the University of Innsbruck. What do you find important to teach the next generation of architects?

That there is such a rich past! I find it important to share perspectives that go beyond our 20th century knowledge. My goal is to let students appreciate the beautiful archive of the architectural discipline, so to speak. At the same time, I’m interested in the history of intersecting cultural and architectural ideas, as a basis for understanding and challenging contemporary paradigms. And finally, teaching is also a great way to learn more myself; it is studying.

Olaf Gipser Architects office based in Amsterdam, ©Thomas Lenden