Barcode Housing System: Enabling user participation in housing design and construction.

In our information society, industrial production is no longer based on the serial repetition of products designed according to predetermined models or standards. Today, the term ‘mass production’ has been replaced by ‘mass customization’. As Kieran and Timberlake contend: "Mass production was all about the economy of making things in quantity, but mass customization does not depend on quantity to be cost effective. Mass customization is about cultural production as opposed to the industrial output of mass production.” (Kieran & Timberlake 2004, p.111). The widespread use of Internet can facilitate the participation of customers in the design-production-marketing chain thus enabling mass customization of variety of products, like computers, automobiles, furniture pieces and also houses. Nowadays, through the Internet it is possible to choose a house form a catalogue −for instance, Ikea’s BoKlok (www.boklok.com)−, to customize a room −using, for example, Ikea’s home planner and the 3D Room Planner from Mydeco (mydeco.com/rooms/planner) −, to create tailor-made houses combining diverse materials, colors and textures –as in Kappe and Timberlake’s Living Homes (www.livinghomes.net)– or even to create a plan layout − for example, with Floor Planner (beta.floorplanner.com/demo)