Sessions
Session 10
Mass Customization and Personalization in Architecture & Construction
Monday Oct 5 2009
15:45-17:05
Linner, Thomas (Technical University of Munich, Germany)
Bock, Thomas (Technical University of Munich, Germany)
Smart customization in architecture. Towards intelligent houses and new ways of value creation.
People's living environments are particularly important in an increasingly crowded and complex world where the demand for inclusiveness and connectivity with the rest of the world is crucial.The performance of conventional architecture which can be described as low-tech, inflexible and not-adaptive, more and more contrasts with the variety of possibilities generated by ICT, Internet and Pervasive Technologies. Industrialized architecture on the contrary could offer a dynamic framework which is much more in tune with the fast innovating nature of new materials, Microsystems and Information Technology embedded in our environments. The paper’s goal is to show that existing information based industrialization and customization strategies used in building industry could be supplemented with functionalities enabled by embedded information-based technologies integrated in the building and active during the building’s life-cycle period. A continuum form high-tech fabrication into high-tech environments could be created through this convergence. All in all industrialization in Architecture and Construction is reaching a next step in its evolution- and this evolution does not start from scratch. Therefore in this paper we conduct a case study on value-chain relevant processes for on demand customized building systems outlined by facts, processes and examples of Japanese Customized Prefabrication (Sekisui Heim, Toyota Home). Japans Prefab industry is regaded to be among the most advanced industrialized housing indusries in the world. Further a case study on a “smart” and prefabricated prototype house (Toyota PAPI) highly integrated with Microsystems leads over to the second part of the paper. There the outlined examples are conceptually extended and carried on towards new kinds of customer relations, personalization and ICT based service value creation showing that a continuum is possible.
Tang, Guohua (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong)
Tseng, Mitchell M. (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong)
Economic Analysis of Customized Apartments
The application of customization in housing industry has attracted attention from homebuilders and consumers in many countries for the last decade. With customized housing, customers have wider latitude of choices beyond the monolithic decision in traditonal housing. Given the additonal choices for customers, developers are facing new challenges in deciding different business alternatives such as what is the right mix of attributes offerered to customers, range of choices, etc. Specifically in this paper, high-rise Customized Apartment (CA) is selected as the research object to neutralize location factor. A framework in which CA develpers can address related economic questions is presented. To do so, firstly presented are CA market segment and the challenges that CA poses for architecture design, sales and marketing, project management etc. This analysis provides a basis to further identify cost drivers in this customization scenario. However, customization brings value along with costs, thus CA value creation model is discussed subsequently. Furthermore, an empirical evaluation of CA, which is a project carried out in China, is also present to discuss the operating window of customized apartment in a specific business environment.
Paoletti, Ingrid (The Building and Science Technology of Science Department (BEST), Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
Digital fabrication and mass customization in building industry: some recent case studies
The scenario of construction industry is nowadays pushed to evolve due to different factors: first of all the enhanced capabilities of parametric design which enables designers to anticipate technological constraints, secondly the evolution of cnc machines and production devices which allows new degrees of freedom in some types of component production.Those factors influences the construction industry giving new tools to better respond to architecture contemporary request of flexibility, unusual shapes, high performances, personalization of materials and technologies. Digital fabrication - aiming at fastening and improve information transfer from design to construction (file2factory) ? and mass customization ? a type of production flexible to customer needs at a cost nearly equal to standard products ? can offer to the designer new instrument to control architecture construction and introduce innovative procedures or technologies. This paper, after analysing some recent case studies, most of them focused on innovative building envelope components which seem to better take into account these new challenges, gives some suggestions for taking advantage in architecture of the benefits of digital fabrication and mass customization in building industry.
Westerholm, Tomas (3D Render Oy)
Stylemachine - mass tailored apartments
Presentation