On Demand Construction

Contemporary society – Liquid Modernity according to Bauman – is the result of continuous changes due to the accelerated pace of technological innovations. This condition does not leave the architectural culture indifferent. On the contrary, it requires overcoming the reductionist approach, which often distinguishes the construction process, in favour of a systemic and heuristic and increasingly integrated vision. Architects and designers are required to have a renewed and increasingly synergistic relationship with the industrial production sector and the various actors involved in the construction process, in order to govern its multiple demands: formal needs, environmental, social and economic sustainability, and technological innovation. The architectural project is increasingly configured as an open system permeated by a widespread knowledge made possible and necessary by new information technologies, in which the end user also participates more effectively. A flexible and adaptable paradigm made possible by a renewed synergy between building industrialization and architectural design and new forms of information management. The Open Source Architecture, based on the collective sharing of information, provides innovative tools able to orient prefabrication towards the growing demand for customization by users (industrial mass customization), with important consequences on the realization approach of buildings, opening up to unexplored scenarios that combine the creative aspect of architectural design with industrialization, combining them with the supply of customizable components – Industrial Mass Customization – pushing towards On Demand Construction, transposing to architecture a well-established expression used with reference to goods or services that are made available on demand on the market. The industrialization of processes also for the production of building components in architecture is in a phase of transition that sees the evolution from mass production to personalized production. In architecture this has resulted in a renewed interest in prefabrication technologies and in experiments that, although in small numbers, refer to the complete construction of entire components and buildings. New frontiers of research are opening up on the potential for technology transfer in architecture from other sectors, such as industrial rapid prototyping and 3D printing (Construction 3D Printing).