Standardization and Identity

"…ways to individualize mass production and make it artistic are being planned in enormous laboratories. Without art, life becomes mechanized and 'dies.'" — Alvar Aalto

Aalto's visions have sadly not yet come true for those seeking an individualized and personal architecture for their home. The largest and most prosperous home builders in the United States have a highly mechanized process of design that limits customization to the most superfluous elements of the home, such as a kitchen island or a bay window. To have a house that is custom built for a specific client and environment is an extreme luxury in the United States, where a vast majority of homes built in the past half century are built as speculative houses by massive mechanized home-building conglomerates. These firms work on slim profit margins and decide what houses they will design and build based on marketing data for a new city.

One such community, developed by Pulte Homes in Frisco, TX, contains more than 1,000 homes from 2,000–3,400 square feet built within the last decade. Seven nearly identical floor plans are available with identical window and room layouts, with no concern for the adjacent homes, solar orientation, existing landscape, thermal comfort, unique site condition, or owners of the home. The home is designed for an idealized fantasy condition and an idealized family. Unfortunately, Aalto's imagined enormous laboratories have not yet been implemented within the large-scale home production market.

Homes in this way are treated more like infrastructure than architecture. They are engineered to conform to strict production schedules, limited building-plan generation and use, and approval fees. The range of architectural customization is thus constrained to the shade of brick veneer and whether to spring for decorative shutters.

Who's to blame for this? With 54,000 architects out of work according to a 2010 AIA article, there are more out-of-work architects than there are houses built by the four largest home builders in the United States in 2010. We surely have enough design talent to provide a level of customization for these homes. Creating a network that connects potential home buyers to architects who are able to provide knowledgeable customization has obvious benefits, but could end up raising the cost of a home beyond the range considered affordable by middle-class American home buyers.

The answer to the problem that arises lies in a computational one. The system that Aalto was imagining is finally possible with an approach that avoids the incredible redundancy of the traditional design/engineer/build loop that prohibits customization of a home.