“It's possible to imagine making more of the things we want or need ourselves, for very little more than the cost of time and materials, and those things replacing many if not most of the material artifacts we now acquire from the market. It's possible for many of us to take concrete and practical steps toward doing this, right now.”
This quote reminds me of a discussion I had in another class about the benefits of customization, particularly in the home and in furniture design. The methods and technologies discussed in this article make it seem more and more feasible that in the future we could reach that level of customization where everyone could design their own furniture, custom to their house. But that brings up the question of whether or not this would replace the interface between the occupant and the architecture, where the architect now cannot make as much of an influence on the occupant because the main interface the occupant is interacting with is their own custom furniture, which can fill their exact needs. Then this becomes another question about whether architects should be the ones designing furniture for the buildings that they’re designing in order to have the most control of how the inhabitants interact with the space. But if the whole point of this customizable furniture is to give the occupant the chance to design their own furniture, separate from any architect or interior designer, then are they trying to distance themselves from the architecture? If they can have their own custom furniture--their own custom interface--will it even matter what their architecture looks like, or will it become a question of merely the size and location of their home?
