We began with a question: What if, tomorrow, all architectural data about the built environment were freely available?

This question didn’t lend itself to easy answers, but this was at least a part of the design. We wanted to provoke thought to unsettle assumptions about design and collaboration. We found that this question positioned us at the intersection of practice, research, and education, opening up a space in which we could have an important conversation about what openness could mean for architecture and the built environment in a world increasingly shaped by data.

Framing the Conversation

At first, open data gave us a way to frame the discussion—a starting point to address broader issues of transparency, collaboration, and collective intelligence. It felt urgent and relevant, and it gave us a lens through which to examine how architects and designers might work together to confront pressing challenges.

The Dutch have a rich tradition of exploring the nuances of openness. From Jaap Bakema’s Architecture of the Open Society to John Habraken’s Open Building, the post-war era laid a strong foundation for understanding openness as both a cultural and societal principle.

Housing For The Millions. John Habraken and the SAR 1960-2000, edited by K. Bosma, 2006 / Hendrik P. Berlage: Moderne bouwkunst in Nederland (Vol. 2), 1935. Image: GV

Jan Duiker, Open-Air School for the Healthy Child, Amsterdam, 1927–1930. A radical architecture of openness; glass, air, and light as design tools for collective well-being.

Today, especially in academia, the conversation has evolved to include the significance of working with Open Science methods, emphasizing transparency and collaboration in research. What new possibilities emerge when architectural data is shared freely, when openness becomes a design principle rather than a technical tool? It was the right story for the moment, but the more we explored, the more complicated—and interesting—the story became.

Expanding the Idea of Openness

Openness, as we soon discovered, isn’t a straightforward concept. It’s layered, often contradictory, and deeply entangled with cultural, political, and personal dynamics. Sharing architectural data might seem like a step toward transparency and collaboration, but it raises critical questions about privacy—who owns the data, and who gets to decide how it’s used?

While data can reveal new insights about the built environment, its inherent invisibility often obscures the systems of power and control that shape its collection and application.

Theodoor Karel van Lohuizen led a team of experts to develop the first global plan for the western Netherlands, grounded in thorough statistical research, 1945-1958. Collection Nieuwe Instituut. Image: GV

We also encountered cultural contradictions: the desire for openness often clashes with a need for security and exclusivity, especially when dealing with sensitive spaces like healthcare facilities or infrastructure. On a personal level, openness can expose vulnerabilities, requiring designers and stakeholders to navigate anxieties about control, ownership, and the unknown.

And then there’s the paradox of not-knowing—embracing uncertainty as part of the design process, rather than striving for data-driven certainty.

These complexities showed us that openness isn’t just about granting access to data but about addressing the contradictions it brings to light. It’s about transforming these tensions into meaningful conversations that reshape how we think about design, collaboration, and society.

Marta Tsingari, Fosters & Partners, at The New Open Minds Conference, organised by the Design Data and Society (DDS) Group, and the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft, October 2022. Image: GV

By October 2022, the project had matured into something larger and more collective. Two key events marked this turning point. First, The New Open Minds Conference brought together thought leaders like Sarah Williams (MIT), Andrew Witt (Harvard), Seul Lee (Snøhetta), Kees Kaan (KAAN Architecten), Martha Tsigkari (Foster + Partners), and Roberto Bottazzi (UCL).

The discussions ranged from climate change to artificial intelligence and societal transformation, always returning to the question of how open data might reshape the built environment.

The next day, The New Open Minds Workshop created a space for deeper collaboration. Architects and experts, including Leo Stuckhard (MVRDV), Deniz Arikan (OMA), Lydia Giokari (Mecanoo), and Alejandro Fuentes (UN Studio), discussed the practical applications of open data in climate-responsive design. These events reflected the project’s growing focus on discourse—on bringing diverse voices into dialogue and seeing what could emerge from a free and open exchange of ideas.

The New Open and the Design Data and Society (DDS) Group with MetaOffice present Feel the Heat, an infrared installation opening the POWER exhibition at CIVA, Brussels, October 2023 – February 2024. Image: GV

In 2023, we extended this engagement into the public realm with Feel the Heat, an installation presented at the Architecture Museum, CIVA Brussels, as part of the POWER exhibition (October 2023 – February 2024). Feel the Heat used sensors connected to meteorological data to regulate temperatures based on regional energy sources, linking the museum to its larger ecosystem. The installation set the tone for ongoing conversations by demonstrating how abstract ideas about data and sustainability can be transformed into tangible, experimental designs.

A Research-by-Conversation Approach

After the events, the project shifted toward a series of in-depth interviews with experts across disciplines—architects, data scientists, cultural theorists, and others—who brought fresh perspectives to the evolving discourse. We spoke, among others, with Dietmar Offenhuber (Northeastern University), who reflected on his book Autographic Design: The Matter of Data in a Self-Inscribing World (MIT Press, 2023), exploring how data materializes and self-documents in complex systems. Theodora Vardouli (McGill University) shared her work on the intersections of computation and design history and introduced her work in Graph Vision Digital Architecture's Skeletons (MIT Press, 2024), while Alessandro Bozzon (TU Delft) contributed insights into human-centered data science, and Bryan Boyer (University of Michigan) offered a strategic lens through which we can view design and public policy. All these dialogues became central to the project—not as a source of definitive answers but as a way to enrich the discourse. 

What these conversations revealed was that diversity isn’t as simple as mixing fields. Some interview partners came from data science with its precision and models, while others brought cultural theory, exploring narratives and historical meaning. This mix wasn’t always seamless—epistemologies and methods sometimes clashed, revealing underlying assumptions about what counts as “architectural knowledge” or how design decisions should be made.

It was in those moments of friction, though, that the most meaningful conversations emerged.

Intersections like these don’t just challenge conventional narratives; they force us to think differently, to connect the dots in ways we hadn’t considered before. And in doing so, they open up entirely new ways of approaching design, collaboration, and the complexities of the built environment.

Launching a New Magazine

The New Open now moves into its next phase: the launch of a magazine on data literacy and architecture. This is where the accumulated ideas and insights converge, offering a curated space for critical inquiry and reflection. The magazine tackles themes that resonate with the challenges and questions architects in research and education face today.

How is AI transforming the way we design and discover new ideas? What does the EU AI Act mean for the decisions architects will make in the future? How can we clean and refine messy architectural data in a lab setting, and why does that matter for better design outcomes? What could the future of healthcare spaces look like, and how might designers work seamlessly alongside machine assistants—a phenomenon we call Assistification?

Alongside these forward-looking themes, the magazine reflects on architecture’s past: how architects have historically used statistics to inform decisions, how artists today transform data into experimental works, and how broader narratives about intelligence—from human cognition to collective intelligence—can inspire new ways of thinking about the built environment.

As a curated magazine The New Open is a space where students, architects, and thinkers can tackle the complexities shaping the field today.