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 (OAA) that holds a Certificate of Practice in Ontario.
NEERAJ BHATIA is an architect and urban designer from Toronto, Canada. His work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure and urbanism. Neeraj is a co-director of InfraNet Lab, a non-profit research collective probing the spatial byproducts of contemporary resource logistics, and the founder of The Open Workshop, a design office examining the project of plurality. Further, he is the research Director of The Petropolis of Tomorrow, which explores the relationship between urbanism and resource extraction. He has worked for Eisenman Architects, Coop Himmelblau, Bruce Mau Design, OMA, Lateral Office, and ORG.Neeraj has previously taught at Cornell University, Rice University, The University of Toronto, The University of Waterloo, and Ohio State University. He is currently an Assistant Professor at The California College of the Arts, where he also he is also co-director of the The Urban Works Agency. His research has been published in Volume/Archis, MONU, Thresholds, Footprint, Domus, Onsite Review, Field Journal and Yale Perspecta. He is co-editor of The Petropolis of Tomorrow (with Mary Casper, Actar, 2013), Bracket [Goes Soft] (with Lola Sheppard, Actar, 2013), Arium: Weather + Architecture (with Jürgen Mayer H., Hatje Cantz Publishing, 2009), and co-author of Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling — Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism (with InfraNet Lab, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Neeraj has received Graham Foundation Grants, The Lawrence B. Anderson Award, Shell Center for Sustainability Grant, Odebrecht first-prize Award for Sustainability, ACSA Faculty Design Award, and the Thesis Prize (MIT, 2007; University of Waterloo, 2005). Neeraj received his Masters degree in Architecture and Urban Design from MIT where he was studying on a Fulbright Fellowship. Prior to that, he attended the University of Waterloo where he obtained a Bachelor of Environmental Studies and a Bachelor of Architecture. He is an NCARB licensed Architect in the Province of Ontario.
