Useful + Agreeable

If a Porsche 911 Turbo were a house, what kind of house would it be? Or if a Wilson Triad titanium tennis racket were a house, what would it be? How would it use state of the art technology, advanced engineering, on-board computer components and premium materials to outperform the other houses? We tend not to think of houses in the same light as consumer goods, but at least one firm of forwarding thinking architects is pushing the product.

Oliver Lang and Cynthia Wilson, partners in Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture (LWPAC), an avant-garde Vancouver firm, are currently in the final stages of research and development on a concept they call PAC Hous(e)ing. If they have their way, house buyers will soon be asking these same questions - beginning to think of houses as products and purchasing components of the architects' system which they can then customize.

The digital age, Lang and Wilson suggest, allows us both the ability to customize as did craftsmen in the agrarian age and the low unit cost associated with mass production of the industrial age. Previously, choice and mass production were seemingly at odds with each other. But, using computer technology and robotic production, we can now have the best of both worlds. The term for this is mass customization - and it has already proven popular in other sectors. Levi's custom fit jeans and Swatch watches are among the many popular and profitable examples of mass customization in contemporary design goods - the way of the future according to LWPAC.

LWPAC's answer to the malaise in the housing market, PAC Hous(e)ing, represents not a fanciful vision of a future house, but the logical next step for an industry catching up with the other smaller products such as computers, cell phones and running shoes.
The inevitable first question "what will they look like?" is somewhat beside the point. A central feature of PAC Hous(e)ing and mass customization in general, is that the appearance will evolve out of the process of determining an individual's needs. The computer generated images which LWPAC has produced suggest an appearance influenced by the smooth colorful curves and sleek hard edges more typical of the electronics industry than house construction.

The connection to electronics is more than skin deep. Traditional house designs do not adequately respond to the growing need for many computers and electronics devices within the home. PAC Hous(e)ing is being designed to encase the wiring of our growing list of gadgets much like a stereo or computer casing does on a small scale. Individual users' needs can be met by plugging everything from fridges to televisions, computers to lighting into the wall and connecting and communicating with the rest of the house and to mobile communication devices as well. Continuing the theme, the walls themselves are plugged into one another to add or subtract spaces and to reconfigure the homes at will.

More significant than the particular aesthetics are the materials being proposed. The materials of the future - thermal plastics, glass, steel and recyclable plastics - all begin in a liquid state and can be poured to fit a wide variety of customizable molds.

PAC Hous(e)ing is not a house style, but rather a system by which owners will be allowed to essentially design their own homes. Individual components can be chosen by the customer to be assembled and configured as they choose. Rather than purchasing a completed house with a set layout and size, the PAC Hous(e)ing concept is infinitely adaptable. If a family's or individual's space needs change, additional components can be purchased to dock onto the existing structure to add more space, windows or doors. Groups of PAC houses can be attached to each other in a multi-unit cluster to fit more units onto a given property in dense urban areas.

The name "PAC", is also a play on the word pack. The system which can be assembled and re-configured easily can also be packed up and transported when we move. Lang and Wilson have lived in Barcelona, Berlin, New York and Vancouver in the past ten years - a degree of mobility not uncommon in our global era. In theory they could have taken their home with them.

Link
http://www.usefulandagreeable.com/lwpac.html
Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture - www.lwpac.com