Mass-customised Cities

What happens when computational design and fabrication technologies ramp up to the urban scale? Though these innovative production processes are currently now largely limited to small-scale design projects, what will happen when they are applied to the vast scale of the 21st-century world city? Could new technologies enable an important shift away from mass production to increasingly bespoke and custom-designed systems? The introduction of standardisation and mass production processes in the 20th century saw the industrial city take on a repetitious and homogeneous quality through the duplication of component parts. Today non-standard, bespoke systems hold out the promise of realising a distinctive urbanism; characterized by the differentiation of serial production and the variation of simple parts that should lead to a more complex and compelling whole. Given the current pace and rate of urbanisation in Asia, the mass customization of the city is set to have imminent and far-reaching practical consequences for the rest of the developing and developed world.

Editorial 05
Helen Castle

About the Guest-Editor 06
Tom Verebes

Introduction Cities and Their Specificities: Standards, Customs and the Making of 21st-Century Urbanity 08
Tom Verebes

Mass Customisation and Standardisation: An Urban Dialectic 18
Martin Bressani

Towards a Distinctive Urbanism: An Interview with Kenneth Frampton 24
Tom Verebes

Miesian Grids and the Domain of Ink 32
Elena Manferdini

Standardising Heterogeneity: Public Housing and the Absent(ed) Architect 40
Michael Bell

From Mass Customisation to Design ‘Democratisation’ 48
Branko Kolarevic

On Modelling Complexity and Urban Form 54
M Christine Boyer

Samsung Raemian Housing Masterplan, Haan River, Seoul, Korea: Contemporary Architecture Practice 60
Hina Jamelle and Ali Rahim

(In)formational Cities 64
Neil Leach

Growth Typologies, Localities and Defamiliarisation: Experiments with Artificial Urbanism in Sichuan, Guangzhou and Beijing 70
Jeffrey Huang

Shanghai Lilong Tower Urbanism, Shanghai, China: Rocker-Lange Architects 76
Christian J Lange

Permanence and Change: An Interview with Mark Burry 80
Donald Bates

The Repulse Bay Complex, Repulse Bay, Hong Kong: Davidclovers 86
David Erdman and Clover Lee

Catalytic Urbanism: The Role of Customised Design Solutions in Delivering Transformational Urban Change 92
Elad Eisenstein

Second Development Zone, Umekita Area, Osaka, Japan: OCEAN CN Consultancy Network 100
Tom Verebes

Engineering Urban Complexity: Bespoke Integrated Design 104
Rob May

Archi-Union Architects, City of Breeze, Shenzhen Bay, Shenzhen, China 110
Philip F Yuan

Technological Transitions, Industrial Innovations and the Marching Chinese Urban Revolution: An Interview with Jerry Ku and Philip Vernon of E-Grow, Shanghai 114
Tom Verebes

Automated Diversity: Gramazio Kohler Research New Morphologies of Vertical Urbanism 122
Jan Willmann, Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler

Counterpoint Cities on the Edge of Chaos 128
Colin Fournier

Contributors 134

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