The Open Source house or OS house project is a non-profit organization, based in the Netherlands, that aims to provide better, more sustainable housing in low-income countries.

8 Design principles are utilized by OS-House to guarantee standards of sustainability, and meet the challenge of flexibility, ensuring that all designs can be locally embedded. [1] See this slide show for more details.

OS-House is an initiative of Enviu and architect Vincent van der Meulen.

Design Competition

On 15 January 2010 they announced a design competition to design a family home to be built in Ghana. The assignment of the competition is a single family house for the emerging middle class in Ghana . The winning design(s) will be built on a plot within the Cape City project.

OS house list 8 principals that the designs should comply with. The competition closes on 15 May 2010.

Licensing

It is a condition of the competition that all submissions are posted to the OS house website and are licensed for anyone to copy or adapt under the CC-BY-SA license.