Architectural Glazing Technologies: Customizing for the Masses in Practice.

How do you pretension a cable-supported skylight with over 41,000 pounds of pressure to provide the required structural support? You talk to Architectural Glazing Technologies, a design and manufacturing firm in Waterboro, Maine, USA. They have worked with the likes of Gehry and Rafael Vinoly, but also work with anyone who needs to do anything with glass from a simple window wall to the answer of the fore-mentioned question. They are an innovative firm who are willing to take big risks in design and manufacturing.

There contributions to the idea of mass customization include an online program where you can design and get a price quote almost instantaneously for a skylight. E-Skylight is a system where you can design any number of combinations of skylights using standardized pieces, from a 12 sided polygon with 15 degrees of pitch to 12 pyramid skylights with 45 degrees of pitch. Then they will give you the plans, sections, data sheets and a price quote for the project, all for free and the entire process of designing one skylight from beginning to end takes less than 10 minutes.

This idea of quick, thorough design straight to the manufactured product epitomizes mass customization. For mass customization to be a successful endeavour there must be seamless flow from idea, to design, to manufacturing, to construction. If there are glitches in the process the system breaks down, becoming more akin to customized production, and therefore slower and more expensive. E-skylight is a system which embodies this idea of a multitude of design options based on mass produced, simplified pieces. The modular system of the production of aluminium supports in the case of e-skylight creates possibilities for individual, inexpensive designs; mass customization.

Mass customization is an idea being driven more by the industry than academics. It’s frequently observed that radical innovations and research work being conducted outside school. This is primarily because task involves huge investment and technical expertise. Working under strict prescribed conditions as per law, licensing such ideas and getting patents also required meticulous work. More over it has evolved from the popular idea of mass-production, which now is being enriched. In a way, to understand modularity in terms of parameters reveals possible alterations that can generate customized iterations. The idea is viable commercially and suits consumer needs.

Digital technology, both is design and data processing has enabled mass customisation, primarily by introducing parametric-city for control in simulation which has completely removed the need for prototypes (hence removing labour cost while still maintaining standards). Simulation being the key to this process, interface comes as a close second most important aspect in allowing this mass-customization process to be accepted by masses. User friendly interface enables commercial success which is of prime importance to continue interest in this philosophy. Advertising strategies combined with digi-tech have generated some pretty interesting interfaces which are more fun to use than even the final product. Another cruicial part for the whole process to succeed is to interpret a product or design in components (physical parameters). While the more complicated and technical parts of the product may remain the same, the modifications can be in areas of user requirements and tastes.

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