High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! John Habraken first articulated the principles of open building in his book Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, published in Dutch in 1961 and in English in 1972 and 1999, and in many other languages. He argued that housing must always recognize two domains of action–the action of the community and that of the individual inhabitant. When the inhabitant is excluded, the result is uniformity and rigidity. When only the individual takes action, the result may be chaos and conflict. This formulation of a necessary balance of control had implications for all parties in the housing process, including architects. A research foundation was established in 1965 at the SAR (Stichting Architecten Research) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands to explore the ramifications, for architects, of the views laid out in that book. Habraken was invited to be Director of the SAR. Later, in the 1980s, a research group (OBOM) was formed at TU Delft under the direction of Professor Age van Randen, the goal of which was to study the practical issues of implementing the ideas in practice.