Mass Customization

One of my classes today was design computing seminar; the class consists of lecturers, including us MS students, speaking on current research and exploration in the design computing field. Last week in class I gave an hour long presentation! The talk was on Mass Customization: What does this mean for design. I was nervous for it because I am not much of one for public speaking
, and while our class is pretty small I was afraid I would not be able to deliver the information in a clear way. I think it went really well. It was fun looking into mass customization and specifically its application to architecture. While I am not yet at the point of deciding upon a thesis focus, this topic keeps on popping up in my readings and it has been inspirational investigating it further. As I see it, there is a lot of potential for modular fabrication and mass customization in architecture.

Here are just a few slides from the presentation.


Image 1, NikeID. The next pair of Nikes I get are going to be customized like these!
Image 2. Helios House, a green gas station that uses modularization and concepts of mass customization in design and construction process. Office dA architecture, Los Angeles, California.
Image 3. FlatPak clients can customize their own home based on a 8' wide one story high wall module.
Image 4. Example of a built FlatPak house, Aspen, Colorado.