Background
The OPEN Prototype Initiative is a joint venture into rethinking the way we build homes in the US. A collaboration between Bensonwood, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and other construction industry members has been formed to develop a series of prototype, or test model, homes.
OPEN Prototype, led by the MIT Open Source Building Alliance (OSBA) and Bensonwood Homes (BWH), will allow industrial partners to work together to create smarter, more efficient homes, appliances, and components. This initiative brings together advanced academic research prototypes, with sophisticated commercial design and production processes. In order to experiment with new processes for the design and manufacture of highly responsive homes, Bensonwood will build the homes. (A responsive home creates an environment based on the needs of the individuals who live in it.) Over the last fifteen years, Bensonwood Homes has developed and built numerous systems in its efforts to apply "Open Building" principles to the design and construction of high quality, energy-efficient homes. This work is an extension of Bensonwood's thirty five year history of innovation and leadership in homebuilding.
OSBA is focused on the development of standards for efficiently creating High Performance Homes. According to information on the E-Star Website, a high performance home "... relies on systems-engineered design, quality-controlled construction, and performance testing to ensure that it is healthy, comfortable, affordable, energy-efficient, durable, and environmentally responsible. To qualify as a High Performance Home, the dwelling must consume 40% less energy than a home built to the 1995 Model Energy Code." For more information, see the High Performance Homes page on the E-Star Website.
Bensonwood Homes and OSBA are working to create an affiliation of industrial companies to fuel the growth of design, data, electronics, software, and physical components of contemporary home building. This cooperative alliance can lead to an explosion of creative activity resulting in high performance, cost-effective environments. Hopefully, this approach will remove barriers to innovation, and create exciting opportunities for efficient construction, energy conservation, proactive health care, new forms of work/learning/entertainment, and the mass-customization of highly personalized residential environments.
Project Goals
While each project will provide it's own specific goals, there are several universal goals for the OPEN Prototype Initiative.
OPEN Prototype Initiative High Level Goals
- Develop a better design and building process which increases efficiency and control for builder, and thereby define a new paradigm for managing the home construction process.
- Conduct research into new systems and products related to fabrication, construction, and use.
- Reduce the amount of waste generated in the construction process.
- Create homes that are readily adaptable to changing needs over time.
- Research next-generation consumer design, configuration, and visualization tools that make high quality custom design more affordable. Ideally these tools will reduce the unpredictability of cost and time to completion, as well as increasing the overall quality for the owner.
- Actively engage the industry in projects that create both market-ready products and prototypes of future products that would increase the efficiency, quality, and cost-effectiveness of housing.
- Evaluate product viability in relation to business models, build-ability, marketability, cost effectiveness, performance, etc.
- Implement new home-based health and energy management applications, networks, and sensors, as they become available.
- Define design and performance standards for building systems related to thermal efficiency, hurricane resistance, mold prevention, life span of systems, maintenance, air quality, noise, dimensional constraints, comfort, etc.
- Raise public awareness of new strategies and methods of building through such media as publications, television programs, and exhibitions.
- Create a high-visibility project that will have potential public relations value to industry collaborators.
- Develop intellectual property of high value to the homebuilding industry.
- Organize symposia tied to the 18-month prototype schedule, and to host special topics and workshops.
- Secure funding for this effort from corporate members and governmental agencies.