BA4: On the Research Paper

The last Blog Assigment is an opportunity to do some web-research for you final paper. Considering each group themes, you may investigate and illustrate a part of your paper (an example/case-study, theoretical background, ...) and create a post with that.
The deadline is the usal friday before the class, which is the next 30th of November.
Have a good work!
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Please spread the word!
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Contour Crafting

Description:
Contour Crafting (CC) is a computer-automated construction technology, invented and developed at USC by Behrokh Khoshnevis Professor, University of Southern California to deliver rapid production, ease of use, significant reduction of waste, and other substantial cost savings. Not only will CC have a significant impact on the point of delivery, but the whole support structure will be similarly affected by the technology. We anticipate substantial revenues for a wide variety of direct users of the technology and its suppliers. In addition to the enormous economic potential, CC has been designed to deliver improved quality of life, superior safety, and beneficial environmental impact. In this sense, CC will enable the construction of custom-designed, low-cost housing with a level of quality heretofore unobtainable. Further, safety elements inherent in the process will significantly reduce the rate of on-the-job injuries that are so prevalent in the construction industry today, thereby lowering the costs of litigation, insurance, and medical treatment, to say nothing of saving lives. The environmental impact will also be significant through energy savings for construction and the near-elimination of waste product. In the long run, CC will revolutionize the construction industry.

Technology:
The CC Technology: CC is a hybrid fabrication method that combines an extrusion process for forming object surfaces and a filling process to build the object core in layered fashion. The extrusion nozzle used to create structural elements has multiple outlets, one for each side, and others for the inner (core) of a wall structure. Each side orifice has an adjacent trowel. As the material is extruded, the traversal of the trowels creates smooth (2 micron has been achieved) outer and top surfaces on each layer. The nozzle can be deflected to create non-orthogonal surfaces such as domes and vaults. Co-extrusion of multiple materials is also possible. For example, plaster as the outer surface material and concrete as the core structural material may be co-extruded by the CC nozzle.

Conclusion:
Counter crafting is a mass customizinging technology that reduces the cost of construction and also production time. Interested part of this technology is it has a different goal of mass customizing in the sence of mass urban or rural housing sectors. On the other hand most of the available mass customization procedures are cost worthy and industrial production. This counter crafting is on site mass customization system that is really cheap in total. Counter crafting works on very simple logics of building construction where as the other mass customizers deals with complex computer generated design solutionns andmateriality.
Whereas in the use of counter crafting it has a limitation on materials and design complexsities although the goal is different from the traditionla mass customization system and CC has huge potentialities but this simple technology still not proved on the field of construction and architecture.

Designing People

There are many different ways of understanding term mass-customization. The first and the obvious one would be an issue of adjusting the material goods to our needs and preferences. Nowadays it tends to be one of the most developed and examined problems concerning mass production.
However we could look at this problem from different perspective, changing the approach and searching for new possibilities. According to the recent biotechnological progress, the adjustable part, in terms of mass customization, can be a man, not his surrounding or background. This phenomenon was studied by Francis Fukuyama in his famous publication called ‘Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution’. He argues that as a result of biomedical advances, we are facing the possibility of a future in which our humanity itself will be altered beyond recognition. He states that in the near future it will be possible to manipulate human DNA in order to achieve all the most desirable characteristics in one person. Fukuyama examines influence of genomes on human behaviors, based on innovative technological researches. He claims that our existence is determined by genes, which have the biggest potential for shaping our everyday life.
Medicine already uses differentiated technologies to prevent from diseases and eliminate psychological deviations. Curing children with ADHD is an example of adjusting people to the existing social norms. ADHD is psycho-physical system, inextricably related to human behavior, rather than simple being a disease. Thus, this kind of intervention changes their character is being in order that they fulfill social expectation being politically correct.
We slowly achieve the point in which biotechnology allows us to ‘design’ people. Fukuyama considers problems of creating children’s genomes by their parents, already before their birth. On one hand controlling what was previously impossible and unpredictable (in that case human DNA) could be the greatest achievement of our decade of mass-customization; however it also brings up lots of anxieties and fear. Considering in a large scale, could lead to enormous problems, like dehumanization and gradual lost and disappearance what is generally being perceived as human, meaning diversity, individuality and personality.
Paradoxically mass-customization, understood in such a way, doesn’t aim to non-standardization. Contrary what could appear as a result is homogenous world full of ‘ideal’ desirable people. This stage Fukuyama considers as ‘Posthuman Era’.

References:
-‘Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution’ Francis Fukuyama
-http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200602/000020060206A0002705.php
-http://genomeathome.stanford.edu/
-http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/325

Architecture as a Product

Mass Customisation is the principle of producing custom made items to individual unique requirements at similar prices to off-the-shelf, mass produced alternatives.

Gilmore and Pine have identified three different types of customisation and its interesting to see how the definition of the mass customisation can be changed to reflect the various possibilities.

1. Adaptive Customisation - where one standard, but customisable, product is designed so that users can alter it themselves. This strategy is described as being appropriate when the customers want the product to perform in different ways on different occasions, and available technology makes it possible for them to customise the product easily on their own. It is the product itself, rather than the provider, that interacts with customers. Example : the adjustable office chair.
   "Mass Customisation is enabling a customer to decide the exact specification of a product or service at or after the time of purchase, and have that product or service supplied to them at a price close to that for an ordinary mass produced alternative".
2. Cosmetic customisation - where a standard product is presented differently to different customers. The cosmetic approach is appropriate when customers use a product the same way and differ only in how they want it presented. Rather than being customised or customisable, the standard offering is packaged specially for each customer. For example, the product may be displayed differently, its attributes and benefits advertised in different ways, or the customer's name may be placed on each item. This type of customisation is sometimes called 'personalisation'.
   "Mass Customisation is enabling a customer to decide the exact specification or personal attributes of a product or service, at or after the time of purchase, and have that product or service supplied to them at a price close to that for an ordinary mass produced alternative".
3. Transparent customisation - This applies where the company provides individual customers with unique goods or services without letting them know explicitly that those products and services have been customised for them. The transparent approach is appropriate when customers' specific needs are predictable or can easily be deduced, and especially when customers do not want to state their needs repeatedly. Transparent customisers observe customers' behaviour without direct interaction and then inconspicuously customise their offerings within a standard package.
   "Mass Customisation is enabling a customer to decide the exact specification or personal attributes of a product or service, at or after the time of purchase, and have that product or service supplied to them at a price close to that for an ordinary mass produced alternative, or have this exact requirement supplied using the vendor's knowledge of the individual customer's needs".

Computerization profoundly impacted all aspects of design. It has transformed design processes, design economics. It allows collaboration and better interaction between designers and other professional, helping them to visualise better, finding many alternatives, options and solutions, in parallel to picking up problems sooner. It also allows communicating design ideas more effectively, making them more easy to visualise and comprehend by not only industry but by the end users (silent designer) themselves. While the implication on product design has been widely examined, the implications on architecture still stand debatable.

Can architecture be sold as a product? A product far beyond just the sizes, colour and texture.

Links:

http://www.strategichorizons.com/mass.html
http://www.klingmann.com/pdf/ArchitectureasaProduct.pdf

Additional Book References:

Some additional books, suggested by the contents of the abstracts:
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- The Prefabricated Home by Colin Davies
- What Every Engineer Should Know About Finite Element Analysis (What Every Engineer Should Know) by John Brauer
- What Every Engineer Should Know About Computational Techniques of Finite Element Analysis (What Every Engineer Should Know)by Louis Komzsik

In the Architectural Design magazines you may find several interesting issues addressing your research topics like:
- Collective Intelligence in Design: New Forms of Distributed Practice and Design (Architectural Design) by Christopher Hight and Chris Perry
- Programming Cultures: Architecture, Art and Science in the Age of Software Development by Mike Silver
- 4dsocial: Interactive Design Environments (Architectural Design) by Lucy Bullivant
- Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design (Architectural Design) by Michael Hensel, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock
- Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies by Michael Hensel, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock

Next Class: ABSTRACTS DISCUSSION

In the next class (Monday, 19) we will discuss the abstracts submitted to help the further development of the research paper.
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For this purpose, each group is going to read his abstract to the class, which will serve as a starting point for a 5-10 min. colective discussion about it. The idea is to get the maximum feed-back, pointing out to the specific critical issues of each group's text.
Good work!

PS: please spread this message.
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BA3: List of Posts

Here is the list of the posts related to the BA3 assignment, published until now (Sunday, Nov. 18th) in the blog. If there is any incorrection, please comment about it.
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G01: "Mass Customization and Prefab Architecture"
G02: "Rules of a Game or Satisfaction of Needs?"
G03: "Prefab Housing in the Digital Age"
G04: "Architecture, Virtuality, User Manipulated Spaces"
G05: "Useful + Agreeable"
G06: "Made for You"
G07: "Housing as Mass Customization"
G08: "Architecture as Product"
G09: "Personalized Medicine"
G10: "Designing People" G11: missing
G12: "Prosumerism vs. Customer Centricity"
G13: "A New Epoch has Begun..."
G14: "Architectural Glazing Technologies: Customizing for the Masses in Practice"
G15: "BA3: Kas Oosterhuis interactive environment at Utrecht"
G16: "User Manufacturing: apoc, ponoko, fab@home"
G17: "Architects on EBay!!!!!!"
G18: "Web-Site/Web-House"

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Rules of a Game or Satisfaction of Needs?

Mass customization is now kind of a fashion term in the industries, witch is used to persuade the customers selling them the idea that the product they are getting is unique but the question is it unique? Comes to our minds do to the fact that is the same product but with an additive component such as texts, colors, parts, etc, trying to make it call a distinctive product.

In the industry of golf exist the idea of mass customization do to the fact that each person has different capacities to perform a golf swing, for example a six years old girl will perform a natural movement because of her flexibility and also because the muscles are in fact growing and in the phase of memorizing movements, but in order to do this she would not be able to perform the swing if the weight, the size, the shaft, and so on are not suitable for her age, size, strength etc. If we get to explain every golf swing in terms of people’s size, strength, rotation, age, etc, we get to find billions of different golf swings so do to this fact the golf clubs industry generate a pre-fabrication process in order to satisfy as many as possible needs in terms of golf swings. So this process is trying to get the golf clubs unique because the golf swing is unique for every golf player, but it’s all about the mass production of components like shafts, heads and grips, but in the unity of this different components you get to make a golf club suitable for your golf swing.

In the same way, the Smart car develop this idea of customizing your car but its again in the mass production of components that you get to buy a “unique” car. In terms of design we don’t see the uniqueness of the car because it is just the colors or the graphics what gives the car a differentiation from one to another.

By crossing this two examples of pseudo mass customization we find more attractive the fact that in the joint of different components you can find the real uniqueness of a product to satisfy the different needs of people but applying this to architecture and more specific to the development of housing end in a prefabrication process were people gets to pick the different components of their house in order to get a exclusive one, but does it really response to customization? Then what is the meaning of customization? Is it about giving some regulation to a game or really trying to satisfy the needs of each different way of living?