Custom Home Magic

Suppose the sometimes enervating process of searching for or building that ‘just-right’ dwelling could instead turn into something not too far from buying a custom-tailored suit on a specialty clothing Website?

Well, Lawrence Sass, the Cecil and Ida Green Associate Professor of Architecture, may soon deliver on that implausible option.

“My vision is that you could go online, choose from among an extensive set of home designs and shapes — Victorian, Greek Revival, Colonial — and select the overall features you want, says Sass. The same program would also let you choose details: cabinet styles, paneling, and molding.

“A computer would sort through that data,” Sass continues, “and would generate the geometries for cutting. Then all that information would go to a factory, and the parts would be automatically cut there before being sent to the home site.”

The parts would arrive ready to assemble. Moreover, there’d be little need for nails and screws because the designs would incorporate a precision notching system. “It’s like dovetailing,” notes Sass, “which means it would be very strong.”

The project is associated with the Department of Architecture’s Fab Lab, which is devising new ways to design and quickly fabricate a range of products. The key piece of hardware is a standard computer-controlled router, which can cut materials like plywood panels in whatever ways the designer-programmer wants. The programming, meanwhile, is done with standard computer-aided design software.

The key to the system is the modeling work that goes into enabling the designs. Sass notes that while many think of building design and engineering as basic tasks, they can be quite complex.

“The easiest way I can explain it,” says Sass, “is the comparison between designing and building a rectangular space, and an oval one.”

Some homeowners, notes Sass, may indeed want oval rooms. With hand-based construction, that would be hard to do. With computer-based construction, though, the system does the geometry, and then the parts are machine-cut — usually by an automated router — with the requisite precision.

It has taken Sass and his co-workers three years to get to the point where they’re ready to try real houses rather than designs like their first buildable project, a cabin. Why so long? “It’s all the time we spent learning how different kinds of wood act, how to set up a fabrication lab, and how to get the different parts to fit together really well,” notes the faculty member.

Though Sass hasn’t costed out particular home designs, he says the combination of the creation of all the needed parts at a central location, and the by-the-numbers ease of construction, will keep prices far lower than for conventional custom homes.

The relatively low cost opens up intriguing possibilities. As someone who grew up in Harlem, Sass came to the architecture profession with a commitment to improving the living conditions of people like those he knew in that community. One of his goals today, in fact, is to work in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. “We’ve taken our fabrication trailer down to that area, and plan to build things — not just houses, but also furniture — on people’s lots, with them helping on the designs.”

Meanwhile, the faculty member can’t hide the fact that despite the hurdles he’s had to surmount in creating the system, he’s enjoying himself. “I love getting up in the morning,” he says, “and I hate going to bed at night.”

by Richard Anthony « Previous | Next »

On Topic: architecture, faculty