After the first post and second post about Open Architectural Design at MIT, here you can find a thesis about the MIT Open Source Building Alliance Operation (OSBA) developed by Kalaya Kovidvisith at MIT and submitted on June 2007: “Open Source Building Alliance Ecology. The Internet Framework for Consumer Driven Participative Design”.

The primary purpose of this thesis is to apply a theory of Open Source to building industries, and illustrate how the augmentations of Internet services can improve the usability of Open Source for the design-build architecture.
This thesis proposes then HOU.SYS, an online community for the Open Source Building, as an alternative approach for a participative platform in mass customization of small housing and its related products, technologies and services.

This thesis reexamines the basic assumptions of how building products are distributed through the Open Source environment. By analyzing the impact of e-Business and Internet technology driving community participation, the integration of (1) four online Business models: Dell, Open Source, iTunes, and eBay, and (2) the advent of mass-customization through the revolution of Internet technology, Computer Aided Design (CAD), and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) for architecture and architectural product design and development will be established. The results of this evaluation identify the effective factors for the Internet augmentation framework to achieve the usability of Open Source for the design-build housing industry, and reinforce the changing relationship between home buyers, architects, and manufacturers prior to making a final housing product.

And from the conclusions:

The value of information, the role of technology, the advancement of fabrication and production, and the customer initiative are the critical factors for individualization.
[...]
The result of the interface experiment indicates that the design application interface is merely a dialogue between consumers and providers to gather information and transform it into an architectural knowledge representation. Consumers do not require comprehensive Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems, but rather interactive interfaces with communication channels to simulate and explore selected features of the product in response to information input and geographical constraints.

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