PreFab / Mass Customization / Flexibility

http://www.bensonwood.com/

"This grid system underlies the floor plans of the houses we design. For example, by fixing the standard floor-tofloor heights in our homes as multiples of 71⁄2-in. risers, we have significantly increased the chances of stairs being functional and to code. Our designers generally don’t plan new kitchen layouts because the hundreds of kitchens in our electronic catalog fit the common quadrants that result from our grid system. The same is true of bathrooms, bedrooms, entry sequences, and even combinations of rooms. As we continue to increase the number of plan blocks in our electronic catalog, the possibilities for creating custom floor plans using standard components based on an organizing grid become limitless. Rather than being constrained, our designers have found that such an organizing grid frees them to focus on larger design issues. A system based on predesigned and pre-engineered components—be they stairwells, floor-plan blocks, or dormers—allows for a tremendous variety of aesthetic expression. The same 8-ft.-wide gable dormer ends up in varying numbers and at different locations on many of the homes we build, but each of these homes is a unique design. The design system allows us to achieve a form of mass customization in which we provide high-quality work without the investment of time and money usually required for custom design." From Bensonwood Homes - Reinventing the House

Habraken, N. J. Supports: an alternative to mass housing [by] N. J. Habraken. Translated from the Dutch by B. Valkenburg. New York, Praeger Publishers [1972]

Stewart Brand How Buildings Learn (Penguin, 1994)
"The essential point of the book is that houses appear to be insentient, but are more like living organisms, no matter what the intentions of the designer and the builder. After showing examples in many types and styles of buildings, Brand concluded that attempts to prevent adaptation and change are both futile and shortsighted. Life is not static; therefore, buildings that house life should be mutable...
there are actually distinct layers in buildings that live in time differently. To make buildings more flexible and durable, these layers should not be entangled with each other. Duffy described four layers, but Brand amended the four to six, and he called them the six Ss: site, structure, skin,
services, space plan, and stuff." From Bensonwood Homes - Reinventing the House

Boudon, Philippe. Lived-in architecture : Le Corbusier's Pessac revisited / Philippe Boudon ; translated by Gerald Onn ; with a pref. by Henri Lefèbvre. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1979, c1972.

Living in motion : design and architecture for flexible dwelling / [edited by Mathias Schwartz-Clauss, Alexander von Vegesack ; translations: Manfred Allie ...]. Weil am Rhein : Vitra Design Museum, c2002

Kronenburg, Robert. Spirit of the machine :technology as an inspiration in architectural design /Robert Kronenburg. Chichester : Wiley-Academy, 2001.

International Conference on Portable Architecture (1997 : London, England) Transportable environments :theory, context, design, and technology : papers from the International Conference on Portable Architecture, London, 1997 /edited by Robert Kronenburg. London ; New York : E & FN Spon, 1998.