Concept House is the academic environment that accommodates and evaluates the development of an industrially made mass customized house. This page contains links to related research environments.
House_n
'Change is accelerating, but the places we
create are largely static and unresponsive.
House_n is a Department of Architecture research group at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology that explores how new technologies, materials,
and strategies for design can make possible dynamic, evolving places
that respond to the complexities of life. Major House_n initiatives
include The PlaceLab and the Open Source Building Alliance.
Changing Places is a joint Architecture and Media Laboratory Consortium
that includes House_n and emphasizes links between the home and places
of healing, work, learning, and community'.
Building
Futures Institute
'The Building Futures Institute is a research
unit of the College of Architecture and Planning. It engages Ball State
faculty, students and industry partners in research in a number of
domains:
* Open Building
* Building Science
* Computational Methods
* Building Culture
* Innovative Practices
* Design Theory and Methods'
'This Center is called "4-Met," which is an abbreviation for "Meta-technology Center for Metropolitan Metamorphosis Methods." The words "for Metropolitan" symbolize the research staff's commitment to Tokyo, which is officially referred to as the "Tokyo Metropolitan Area." '
'The diversity of building stocks is a challenge that will require individualized solutions, rather than the clear but simplistic and standardized solutions that are commonly seen in conventional architectural engineering. The solutions also need to be universal rather than specific, and they must be adapted for general application. The goal of the COE is to rebuild the framework for new approaches to architectural engineering in the 21st century by disseminating the results of this work'.
'Open Building is an approach to the design of buildings that is recognized internationally to represent a new wave in architecture, but a new wave with roots in the way ordinary built environment grows, regenerates and achieves wholeness.
Those advocating an open building approach recognize something quite unremarkable but something that nevertheless needs to be made explicit: that both stability and change are realities in contemporary built environment.
Buildings - and the neighborhoods they occupy - are not static artifacts even during the most stable times, and during times of social and technical upheaval are need adjustment in some measure to remain attractive, safe and useful'.
Lean
Construction
'The International Group for Lean Construction
(IGLC), founded in 1993, makes up a network of professionals and researchers
in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) who feel that
the practice, education, and research of AEC have to be radically renewed
in order to respond to the challenges ahead.
We call our vision: Lean Construction
Our goal is to better meet customer demands and dramatically improve
the AEC process as well as product. To achieve this, we are developing
new principles and methods for product development and production
management specifically tailored to the AEC industry, but akin to
those defining lean production that proved to be so successful in
manufacturing'.
Smart
Homes
'The Smart Homes Foundation is a new internationally
oriented platform for promoting smart home technology, exchanging ideas,
initiating projects and implementing technology and services into practice.
The Smart Homes Foundation aims to achieve the integration and application
of smart home technology as well as to create an international forum.
This forum wishes to discuss and exchange information on the various
aspects of smart homes, such as technical infrastructure, software & hardware,
applications and marketing issues, as well as societal impacts. Smart
homes technology and telematics offer unique opportunities to make
products and services easier for "less abled" people to
use and more attractive to everyone. Therefore, the Smart Homes Foundation
will particularly pay attention to the "Design for All" concept
in all its activities'.