Open House 2011

by Droog led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Levittown, NY
USA

On Saturday April 23rd 2011 Droog in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro hosted Open House a social design experiment exploring the future possibility of domestic service spaces.

Inspired by the New York attitude 'why do it yourself, when you can hire someone else' Droog and DS+R sought to work with a series of designers to explore how this service outsourcing could be used amongst struggling suburban communities.

Adopting the motto 'Discover Your Inner Service Provider' 9 design teams (listed below) took over houses in Levittown to illustrate their vision of the possible future of suburban living.

Some of the houses featured services such as the ever popular community farm, a communal pantry, a domestic museum, and a ‘vacation practice’ home. While the outcomes were a little disappointing,the idea of a service community beautifully walks the line between idealism and realism. It recognizes the economy in which we live and provides possible solutions to over consumption and debt-saturated living.

Charles Renfro, partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, captures the ethos of the project below

“Part of a shift from hyper-consumption towards collaborative consumption, Open
house is an architectural outgrowth of a revolutionary re-adjustment of capitalist values, ones which mix with social values,”

Collaborative consumtion is the key to this project. How can western communities move towards this future? 'Open Houses' has treaded the water; now, we must see what comes of it.

List of Participating Designers:

Alex Schweder La with Jessica Rivera and Adam Bandler
Austin + Mergold
Claudia Linders
EFGH (Hayley Eber & Frank Gesualdi) with Irina Chernyakova
Fake Industries Architectural Agonism (Urtzi Grau & Cristina Goberna)
Freecell (Lauren Crahan & John Hartmann)
Janette Kim and Erik Carver
L.E.FT (Makram El Kadi & Ziad Jamaleddine)
The Living (David Benjamin & Soo-in Yang) and Livia Corona

Photo by Rocco S. Cetera Open house by Droog led by Diller Scofidio +Renfro

Photo by Rocco S. Cetera Open house by Droog led by Diller Scofidio +Renfro