Foundations for Customization

    

    “Everything we build we want to be architecture. We want all architecture to be special. Now how can everything be special?”

 

    Architects cannot believe they will be the sole contributor to change in the world. The architect is a career that was created in order to erect monumental pieces of the world within a built environment that was being developed by the hands of individuals. The need for an architect’s signature has changed the way in which cities have grown and halted the natural flow of developing cities. The personal touch by the occupant within a building has almost entirely disappeared. John Habraken described the level of performance in a building by the way it supports interchangeable components. The open building concept has different levels of permanents to it; structure, envelop, MEP systems, partition walls, and furniture. 

 

“It will be an architecture in which the permanent is truly structural and meaningful and the short-lived full of energy and surprises; where form is thematic in unending variation and renewal, and where the act of designing is significant and respected on all levels of intervention.” 

– John Habraken

 

    By creating a consistent form of architecture, similar to the residential streets in Amsterdam, the variation within the consistency will be derived from the specific wants or needs of the individuals living, designing, or constructing the building. I found the Next21 building in Osaka, Japan to be an awesome example of how an architect can lay the framework for a neighborhood. The building floorplate hosting various formations of residential spaces, connected by public private spaces, is exactly what I was thinking of in my previous blog post. By allowing these mailable floor plates to interconnect with the public spaces and circulation, the architect is crossing individual daily routines with one another and creating interaction within a neighborhood.