The Open Workshop

Projects

Decentering the Commune

Chicago, IL, USA

The Bronzesheet is a series of large-format prints that catalyzes new forms of solidarity as a coalition. They are categorized by the same themes that organize the design project’s spatial network—food, making, ecology, and care.
The Center Won’t Hold

Chicago, IL, USA

A design-research project on Bronzeville that proposes a decentralized model of sharing wherein new forms of solidarity can empower residents to take action on the available city.
Luna

Venice, IT

Trees such as Luna are an integral component to the cleansing of air and absorption of atmospheric carbon, yet their critical role often goes unnoticed, making them one of several silent subjects of capitalism.
Staking the Land

Kuwait-Saudi Border

This project contends that the most vital component to resisting oil extraction in the neutral zone between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia is to bond people to the land. The proposal uses a grid of micro-diffused infrastructures as devices to situate people in the land and form a diffused resistance.
Commoning Domestic Space

Arsenale, Venice, Italy

A design-research project on collective living experiments. Research into the hardware, software, and orgware of a series of case studies serves as a catalyst for a series of design prototypes.
Commune Prototypes

Not sited

The following five prototypes examine differing relationships between the private and public realm—from highly defined and delineated to fluid and malleable. In each case, a technique of form informs the typological arrangement.
Pliable Portico

Los Angeles, CA, USA

A proposal of dynamic drapery that architecturalizes the notion of a tree canopy in a bounded pocket of urban space and fosters a series of diverse experiences that engage datum, layering, scale, and use.
Re-Assembling the Archive

Seoul, South Korea

Going beyond the archive as a static container of information and transitioning the building from a site of power to a place of empowerment, Re-Assembling the Archive situates the archive as a place of discourse and public assembly
Pacific Felt Factory

San Francisco, CA, USA

Done as a pro-bono project, and funded through a San Francisco Arts Commission Grant, the project leverages simple materials to create both a backdrop and beacon for the courtyard.
Collective Form

San Francisco, CA, USA

A solo exhibition highlighting the first five years of the Practice’s work, emphasizing five thematics of collective form: Soft Frameworks, Articulated Surfaces, the Living Archive, Re-Wiring States, and Commoning.
The Estuary Commons

Oakland, CA, USA

Resilient by Design (RBD) was a year-long collaborative design challenge that selected 10 international design teams to work with local residents and public officials and create designs that support the Bay Area’s resilience to climate change.
A Room in the City

San Francisco, CA, USA

A scheme that considers how privacy can be enabled in public through a porous object that simultaneously welcomes the city and the plurality of its citizens while also providing a space for individual reflection.
Garden of Framed Scenes

Viseu, Portugal

An outdoor pavilion that employs a series of framed openings to transform a space of flows into a space of gathering.
Enfilade House

San Francisco, CA, USA

Situated on a deep lot in Noe Valley, the Enfilade House employs an enfilade plan of different sized rooms to create a flexible framework of occupation.
Us, Alone

Rome, Italy

A series of images that interrogate the basic elements of the room and critique the territorial environment outside the door.
At Home Together

Seoul, South Korea

At Home Together investigates the intentions and institutions of contemporary collective living experiments in San Francisco—identifying the political governance that structures the public and private realm.
Ways of Life

Documenta 14, Kassel, Germany

Ways of Life is a project that examines new domestic conditions of living and working in close proximity to nature. A series of 19 diverse architects were selected to produce prototypes that are currently being realized.
Petropolis of Tomorrow

The Petropolis of Tomorrow is a design-research project, which examines new Petropolises —cities formed from resource extraction— associated with energy harvesting and production in South America.
Habitactory

Hamburg, Germany

Habitactory proposes a new model of development that commons the resources of the city to create a resilient framework for differential users and uses.
Environment as Politics

United States of America

An examination of the relation between density and the popular vote across all 3,144 counties. Illustrating 51 emblematic counties, representing a range of geographic locations and political affiliations, reflected the social and economic relationships that shape (and are shaped by) our politics.
Re-commoning the Frontier

San Francisco, CA, USA

A project that re-engages the notion of the commons, one of the first uses of San Francisco’s Southeast Waterfront’s lands, to create an alternative to public space—positioning the concept of working together as a critical mechanism to embrace pluralism.
Depth of Fields House

Lake Edersee, Germany

The Depth of Fields house begins with simple geometric orders that create distinctions within the domestic/ work realm to ensure that the tasks of domestic life, work, public appearance, and privacy are protected.
Mountain House

San Francisco, CA, USA

The Mountain House splits the typical San Francisco house into three stacked units — a two-bedroom townhouse, a three-bedroom family apartment, and a one-bedroom roof terrace apartment; layering these lifestyles and increasing the density of San Francisco.
Dredgescaping Toledo

Toledo, Ohio, USA

The proposed geologics of dredge enable local environments and citizens as well as territorial transformations to co-evolve with and through the dredge cycle, repositioning land as a temporal material state.
The World in Our Eyes

Lisbon, Portugal

A design-research project that questions how to leverage design opportunities that empower local populations and ecologies by reconfiguring extraction processes, infrastructures, and communities to account for their future production(s).
Scaffoldia

Oakland, CA, USA

Scaffoldia is a play-structure that originates from two monumental architectural forms that embody ‘outward’ and ‘inward’ space — the pyramid and dome. Located within an area of Oakland that is deprived of play structures, this small monument uses the politics of play to frame the public life of the city.
Garden of New Worlds

Grand Metis, Canada

The Garden of New Worlds takes inspiration from the English romantic botanical garden, while employing sculptural maze forms to catalyze curiosity and play in rediscovering the history of five plants significant to the history of Canada.
Death and Life of the Buffer Zone

New York City, NY, USA

An installation that examines the series of publics spaces formed from the anomalous parcels created as the avenue of Broadway transects the grid of Manhattan.
Malleable Monuments

NYC, NY / San Francisco, CA, USA

A solo exhibition highlighting the first three years of the Practice’s work, emphasizing thematics of collective form: Soft Frameworks, Articulated Surfaces, the Living Archive, and Re-Wiring States.
Varna Public Library and Archive

Varna, Bulgaria

The proposal embodies the diverse depth and collective strength of Varna’s citizens by setting up a ‘forest’ of structure that references both the notion of the individual and the strength of collective action.
Urbanism from Within

San Francisco, CA, USA

This design-research exhibition explores the typology of the secondary unit and its interaction with the larger systems of a city in an attempt to understand the feedback systems between the individual unit of the interior and the collective framework of the city — in essence, how the interior can reformat urbanism from within.
Staging Sheppard

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

An urban design proposal that examines the path between a residential environment and a proposed light-rail transit route. This proposal allows for safe public occupation of the right of way and reorient culture to walking.
Rerigging Air

Copenhagen, Denmark

A proposal that seeks to merge tradition with technology to allow for informal uses to remain on the site while also creating a cultural complex that celebrates the site’s heritage.
Formworks

San Francisco, CA, USA

Fabricated through a single CNC module, the exhibition collapses structure, skin, and programmatic enclosure into a single surface. Showcasing a series of design projects, the exhibition also hosted the honorary doctorate event conferred on the Pulitzer Prize winner Holland Cotter.
Enveloops

Toronto, ON, Canada

Instead of separating one from the physical environment, our proposal for an installation examines the expansion of the envelope into a three-dimensional field condition that envelops the visitor.
Steam Stratum

Liepāja, Latvia

Steam Stratum is a proposal for a civic building that consolidates the various programs for the thermal bath and park and structures them within a line, tapping into the rich geologic history of Latvia and the presence of natural thermal baths.
Garden of Displaced Roots

Grand Metis, Canada

Our proposal produces a living archive of 22 of the earliest invasive plant species to Canada that were intentionally introduced for their beauty. Organized within a tensile structure that allows each of these species to hover behind a transparent veil, these plants are separated from the ground below where they could pose a threat.
SF Fire Department Headquarters

San Francisco, CA, USA

A fire station typically is organized into two distinct zones — one that reaches outwards to the city and acts as a monumental symbol of protection, and one that contains the hidden inner workings of the station. Instead, our proposed façade inflects its form to reveal the inner workings of the fire station as well as its monumental civic image.
Constellatory Cove

Porto Brandao, Portugal

A proposal that adopts a strategy of first disconnecting the islands of Porto Brandão only to reconnect them in a precise manner. The act of disconnection, allows each of these islands to realize its ‘almost’ project into an ideal state.
En-Pointe!

Kagran, Austria

Taking cues from the context, En Pointe! employs a large multi-programmed public surface that is timeshared through a schedule to allow a more diverse and larger set of public programs.
Recon-Figure

Far Rockaway, New York, USA

Taking the logic of the stabilizing rock jetties, this proposal nests a series of figures to augment the existing coastline. Instead of perceiving water as something to defend against, how can it be repositioned as a performative feature that connects across the obstructions currently on the site?
Conservatory House

London, UK

Sited in the periphery of London, this house renovation opens up the once compartmentalized interior into a larger room that extends to the exterior. This enables light to penetrate deep into the house’s interior, while transforming the garden from an accessory to an integral element that reconfigures the interior program.
Interlace

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Calibrated to the speed of movement, this low-resolution lenticular composition of 576 individual pyramids collapses four paradigmatic views of Houston in one surface plane. The perspectives are recomposed into an open work wherein the viewer navigates and forms new perspectives.
Drift House

Arctic, Canada

The Drift House hybridizes the intelligence of tradition and technology in both indigenous Inuit housing types and Cold War era government sanctioned prefabricated housing by leveraging snow fences, a typically static infrastructure that is used to protect roadways from snow accumulation.
Unlocking America’s Core

Middle America

In the project, a series of new HSR terminals interface with existing infrastructures – highways, roads and airports to ‘unlock’ the identities, productive surfaces and vast economic potential of communities within America’s geographic core.
Liquid Commons

Hudson Strait, Canada

A proposal that provides a new, malleable educational infrastructure composed of a series of boats that travel between the harbors of eleven adjacent settlements, catering to more than seventy-five hundred “unserved” citizens of the Nunavut region in Canada.
Ice Roads/ Truck Stops

Contwoyto Winter Road, Canada

The proposal considers a trucking corridor north of Yellowknife that is open for only 67 days on average during the winter, utilizing strategic symbiosis to reconcile the confluence of industry, ecology, energy production and collectivity.
Life Along the Conduit

The scroll depicts a landscape scene that spans from the city to the suburbs, exurbs, and eventually hinterland environments.
Bruce Mau Office Redesign

Toronto, ON, Canada

Hired as an external consultant and designer for the Bruce Mau Office, the redesign emerged through extensive studies of the current office layout and the office manifesto. Excerpts from the manifesto summarize the working methodology which materialized in the new office layout.

Research

Publications

Authored Texts

Media

Information

info@theopenworkshop.ca

Toronto

11 Cavalry Trail
Markham, ON
L3R 9H1 Canada

San Francisco

2830 20th Street, #208
San Francisco, CA, 94110

The Open Workshop is a multidisciplinary design workshop focused on critically re-examining the concept of an open work, first posited by Umberto Eco in 1962. With expertise ranging from architecture to urban design, The Open Workshop uses a multidisciplinary approach to provide innovative, project-specific design solutions. Recognized for its design-research, the office has a record of complex projects that engage multiple systems and stakeholders.

The office has garnered recognition through international competitions, exhibitions, and publications that focus on how design-research can renegotiate the relationship between architecture and its environment. The firm’s approach relies on transcalar design techniques that find opportunities to holistically integrate environmental, political, economic and social factors. The Open Workshop is a licensed architectural practice in the State of California, USA and the Province of Ontario, Canada (OAA).

Leadership

Neeraj Bhatia
Founding Principal

Cesar A. Lopez
Associate + Representation Lead

Bios

NEERAJ BHATIA is a licensed architect and urban designer whose work resides at the intersection of politics and architecture. Neeraj is founder of THE OPEN WORKSHOP, a transcalar design-research office examining the negotiation between architecture, territory, and collectivity. Select distinctions include the Architectural League Young Architects Prize, Emerging Leaders Award from Design Intelligence, and the Canadian Prix de Rome. He is an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts where he also Directs the urbanism research lab, the Urban Works Agency. Bhatia has also held teaching positions at UC Berkeley (as the visiting Esherick Professor), UT Arlington (as the visiting Ralph Hawkins Professor), Cornell University, Rice University (As the Wortham Fellow), and the University of Toronto. He is co-editor of books Bracket [Takes Action], The Petropolis of Tomorrow, Bracket [Goes Soft], Arium: Weather + Architecture, and co-author of Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling — Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism and New Investigations in Collective Form. Neeraj has a Master degree in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT where he was studying on a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies and Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Waterloo.

CESAR A. LOPEZ is a design researcher who draws from his experiences growing up in the United States-Mexico border region to explore the entanglements between architecture, territory, and the politics that dictate them. Cesar is an associate and representation lead at THE OPEN WORKSHOP, where his primary focus is developing the office's representational project, which aims to frame collateral populations and environments that often go unheard in the discipline. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico, School of Architecture + Planning, where he teaches studios on territorial typologies and seminars on representation as a political tool. Cesar taught architectural design studios, representation courses, and workshops at the California College of the Arts (CCA) and the University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design. In 2018, he participated in the Resilience by Design - Bay Area Challenge as the Resilient Design Research Fellow. His writings, drawings, and research have been published in Bracket [Takes Action], Pidgin, Momentum Magazine, Places Journal, and the Art Journal. Cesar received his Master in Architecture from the California College of the Arts (CCA) and a Bachelor of Science of Architecture from Texas Tech University, College of Architecture in El Paso.

Current Team

Haifa Al-Gwaiz, Kayla Bien, Shawn Komlos

Previous Team

Caleb Bentley, Rafael Berges, Andrew Bertics, Tracy Bremer, Mary Casper, Jared Clifton, Carly Dean, Ian Erickson, Zack Glennon, Clare Hacko, Alicia Hergenroeder, Anesta Iwan, Jeremy Jacinth, Hannah Jane Kim, Brian Lee, Douglas Lee, Mikaela Leo, Liz Lessig, Bella Mang, Shirin Monshipouri, Jonathan Negron, Bomin Park, Sonia Ramundi, Katharina Sauermann, Sayer Al Sayer, Blake Stevenson, Fei-Ling Tseng, Laura Williams, Shuang Yan, De Peter Yi, and Wei Zhao.

Collaborators

Pier Vittorio Aureli / DOGMA, Mark Baechler, Inaqui Carnicero / RICA Studio, Lorena Del Rio / RICA Studio, Alexander D'Hooghe / Organization for Permanent Modernity, Reto Geiser / MG&Co., Christoph Hesse / Christoph Hesse Architects, Richard Hindle, Karen Kubey, Jürgen Mayer H. / J. Mayer H. Architecture, Noemi Mollet / MG&Co., Maya Przybylski / InfraNet Lab, Christopher Roach/ Studio VARA, Mauricio Soto / Studio-LD, Antje Steinmuller, Surface Design Inc.

Events

Neeraj Bhatia lectures at Texas Tech on “Solidarity through Commoning”

November 8, 2021
Neeraj Bhatia joins Charlotte Malterre-Barthes and Mason White to discuss Taking Action at the After Hope Symposium

November 5, 2021
Neeraj Bhatia joins Brigitte Shim, Annie Lebel, and Alison Brooks for the jury of the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

2021
Neeraj Bhatia lectures at the AA City as a Project Series on “Collective Living as a Way of Life”

October 20, 2021
The Center Won’t Hold: Decentering the Commune into Networks of Care opens at the Chicago Architecture Biennial

September 17 – December 18 2021

The Center Won’t Hold: Decentering the Commune into Networks of Care opens at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, The Available City, David Brown (curator), Chicago, IL, USA. On the theme of THE AVAILABLE CITY. Curated by David Brown, the Biennial will explore some of the 10,000 city-owned vacant sites in Chicago. Our Proposal, “The Center Won’t Hold” explores Decentering the Commune into a network of institutions.
Neeraj Bhatia serves as an Advocate for the JAE Fellows, supporting BIPOC fellowship.

2021
Neeraj Bhatia lectures at Columbia GSAPP — Entanglements Studio on Commoning Domestic Space.

June 9, 2021
Staking the Land opens at the Venice Biennale of Architecture — Kuwait Pavilion, SPACEWARS

May 23 – November 29, 2021

Staking the Land opens at the Venice Biennale of Architecture — Kuwait Pavilion, SPACEWARS, Asaiel Al Saeed, Aseel Al Yaqoub, Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Yousef Awaad (curator).
LUNA opens at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Future Assembly

May 23 – November 29, 2021

LUNA opens at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Future Assembly, Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann (curator).
Commoning Domestic Space opens at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, How Will We Live Together?, Hashim Sarkis (curator), Venice, Italy.

May 23 – November 29, 2021

A series of differential grids organize collective life, private rooms, and objects. Collective life is parsed into vectors of domestic labor, immaterial labor, and recreation. By overlaying ordered systems of differential frequencies, a novel form of diversity is produced.
Neeraj Bhatia lectures at Syracuse University on Collective Form/Forums.

March 30, 2021
Cesar A. Lopez lectures at Syracuse University for lecture seminar on the US-Mexico Border

March 27, 2021
Neeraj Bhatia and Cesar A. Lopez join ACSA Conference for panel discussion on Design Process and Methods

March 25, 2021

Neeraj Bhatia and Cesar Lopez join ACSA Conference for panel discussion on Design Process and Methods with Grant Alford, Bruce Wrightsman, Michael Hughes, Maria Gonzalez, Aranguren, Felipe Mesa, Online.
Neeraj Bhatia joins Harvard GSD for panel discussion on Harvard Design Magazine #48 Launch Event

March 23, 2021

Neeraj Bhatia joins Harvard GSD for panel discussion on Harvard Design Magazine #48 Launch Event with Mark Lee, Florencia Rodriguez, Paul Andersen, Maite Borjabad, Marc Norman, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Neeraj Bhatia joins Harvard GSD/ ETHZ for panel discussion on Urbanism as Material Accumulation—Oil Spaces

March 15, 2021

Neeraj Bhatia joins Harvard GSD/ ETHZ for panel discussion on Urbanism as Material Accumulation—Oil Spaces with Carola Hein, and moderators Carlotte Malterre Barthes and Milica Topalovic, Online.
Neeraj Bhatia joins AIA Arizona Associates Conference for panel discussion on The Intersection: Research, Technology, and Academia

February 26, 2021

Neeraj Bhatia joins AIA Arizona Associates Conference for panel discussion on The Intersection: Research, Technology, and Academia with Elizabeth Galvez, Tsz Yan Ng, Online.
Neeraj Bhatia lectures at Harvard GSD, Landscape Architecture Dept on Collective Form and Commoning, Cambridge, MA.

February 22, 2021
Neeraj Bhatia joins University of Virginia for panel discussion on Projecting Fellows—Infrastructures & Ecologies

January 26, 2021

Neeraj Bhatia joins University of Virginia for panel discussion on Projecting Fellows—Infrastructures & Ecologies with Priyanka Bista, José Ibarra, Zannah Matson, Galen Pardee; and moderates with Felipe Correa, Online.

Projects

Decentering the Commune

Chicago, IL, USA

The Center Won’t Hold

Chicago, IL, USA

Luna

Venice, IT

Staking the Land

Kuwait-Saudi Border

Commoning Domestic Space

Arsenale, Venice, Italy

Commune Prototypes

Not sited

Pliable Portico

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Re-Assembling the Archive

Seoul, South Korea

Pacific Felt Factory

San Francisco, CA, USA

Collective Form

San Francisco, CA, USA

The Estuary Commons

Oakland, CA, USA

A Room in the City

San Francisco, CA, USA

Garden of Framed Scenes

Viseu, Portugal

Enfilade House

San Francisco, CA, USA

Us, Alone

Rome, Italy

At Home Together

Seoul, South Korea

Ways of Life

Documenta 14, Kassel, Germany

Petropolis of Tomorrow

Habitactory

Hamburg, Germany

Environment as Politics

United States of America

Re-commoning the Frontier

San Francisco, CA, USA

Depth of Fields House

Lake Edersee, Germany

Mountain House

San Francisco, CA, USA

Dredgescaping Toledo

Toledo, Ohio, USA

The World in Our Eyes

Lisbon, Portugal

Scaffoldia

Oakland, CA, USA

Garden of New Worlds

Grand Metis, Canada

Death and Life of the Buffer Zone

New York City, NY, USA

Malleable Monuments

NYC, NY / San Francisco, CA, USA

Varna Public Library and Archive

Varna, Bulgaria

Urbanism from Within

San Francisco, CA, USA

Staging Sheppard

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Rerigging Air

Copenhagen, Denmark

Formworks

San Francisco, CA, USA

Enveloops

Toronto, ON, Canada

Steam Stratum

Liepāja, Latvia

Garden of Displaced Roots

Grand Metis, Canada

SF Fire Department Headquarters

San Francisco, CA, USA

Constellatory Cove

Porto Brandao, Portugal

En-Pointe!

Kagran, Austria