project websites: WikiHouse by Open Systems Lab & Jumpsuit by the Rational Dress Society
These projects demonstrate new ways of working in architecture and fashion - traditional, competitive design fields obsessed with individual visionaries and rife with labor (self-) exploitation. They were started and maintained by a small group and released in an open way, often for the benefit of DIY-ers or local fabricators/producers. Being open source created a fundamental shift for these projects altering the relationship between designer and "consumer" (or collaborator) along with elements of time, production process and budget. Though groundbreaking of themselves, it's also exciting to imagine how these kind of projects could be forked and evolve with local climate, material or cultural variants as more designers and design consumers become aware of open source and design forge platforms emerge.