Hasta la Vista Baby: the sun sets on the Hummer as we know it. But is there life after death for a car?
Environmentally friendly doesn’t cross the mind when you think of the 8600 lb, gas guzzling, toxin-inducing fuel machine that is the Hummer SUV. Notoriously known for being the machismo car that is just as much of an expense to a consumer’s wallets as it is to the environment, Hummer’s popularity amongst buyers has steadily declined within the recent years of environmentally conscious purchasing habits. So, when Hummer announced that they were going out of business, it came as little surprise by us. In fact, we’re inwardly pleased that these vehicular extravagances will no longer be chewing up the roads or the world’s supply of fossil fuel.
Home is where the Hummer is, at least when they’re hollowed out, turned face down, welded together, enclosed and roofed. Oh, and furnished.
But, now with the Hummer brand coming to an end, what are alternative uses that the monster-truck has besides being a vehicle? Super-star architect team Chris Hodgetts and HsinMing Fung of HplusF may have come up with the solution: the Hummer Home, a modular, capsule-style residence that’s made out of, you guessed it, deconstructed, recycled, re-purposed and regurgitated Hummers.
Large enough for a family, the Hummer Home features all the amenities and functions of a conventional residence, plus it comes with license plates.
Combining an innovative use of technology with a nod to the Los Angeles car culture, the HPlusF team came up with the idea as a way to celebrate the character of their chosen city with an eco-friendly habitat that even Mother Nature can respect.
Sustainable components are found throughout the home formerly known as a Hummer.
Hummer Home is made of eight body shells that are supported by a prefabricated steel armature, and contains a 12-volt electrical system that charges refrigeration, hvac and media systems. A geothermal storage tank, photo-voltaic cells and soy insulation enhance the home’s energy efficiency.
An open floor plan populated with built-in furniture maximizes the use interior space.
This is apparently not the first time the award-winning architectural design firm HPlusF has taken an existing, ready-made object and transformed it into something new and sustainable. Self-described multi-disciplinarians, the firm’s website states that they comprise “an interdisciplinary group of architects, designers and inventors, with skills in urban design, cultural centers, and exhibit design. Our projects range from museums to historic restorations, from interactives to placemaking, and from the performing arts to temporary structures”.
The Hummer Home need not be used only as a home, says the architects. Re-arrange the eight modules to create community centers, co-ops and studios.
Kudos to HPlusF for turning a bunch of lemons into lemonade. Now, what to do with those space shuttles…?
Hanging out: HOMB modular homes offer an unusual faceted design style that derives from the unique shape of their modules.
A few years ago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York (aka MoMA) put on a much talked-about show on the state of prefabricated architecture (aka prefab) from the perspective of high design. Looking back on that show now, it’s reasonably safe to say it represented a crest in the wave of popular interest in prefab that emerged with the appointment of Allison Arieff to the editorship of Dwell magazine in 2000. For many years thereafter Arieff used her platform to promote prefab as a viable way to create well-designed, affordable homes and structures using factory-built modules trucked to a site and assembled into a finished whole.
One result of this surge was a proliferation in the number of new companies offering upscale, contemporary-styled prefab dwellings. Today there seem to be dozens if not hundreds of them scattered across the country, vying to catch the attention of the home buying market (or what’s left of it). Some are stand-alone manufacturers, others are collaborative ventures involving architects and fabricators. Collectively their catalog of designs constitute a visible departure from the somewhat stale, ersatz renditions of quasi-traditional homes cooked up by the major players who had dominated the prefab market in the decades since the Second World War.
While it might be relatively easy to tell this new breed of companies apart from their older competitors, it does, at times, get somewhat difficult to differentiate the new guys on the block from each other. That’s one reason why we rather liked what we saw when we first came across HOMB, a modular operation out of…well, we’re not exactly sure. They have one of those websites that assiduously avoids telling you where they are located. Anyway, with the help of Google we found out they were based in Washington State, and appear to be a joint venture of Skylab Architecture and Method Homes.
TOP: From module (left) to modular steel frame (middle) to enclosed house (right). MIDDLE: you’ve seen the stills, now watch the video. BOTTOM: Hellooooo…anybody HOMB?
What really caught our eye in browsing their website was the fact that their modules have a shape rather unlike any we had seen before. They’re equilateral triangles, to be precise, meaning triangles having three equal sides and equal angles.
What’s so exciting about that? Well, you put a half-dozen modules together and what do you get? A hexagon, one of our quintessential modular forms! Think honeycombs! Think architect Frank Lloyd Wright, sculptor/architect/painter Tony Smith, and lots of other less well-known creatives who have seized on this particular polygon as a way to generate and organize form and proportion in their work. Finally, somebody who’s thought out of the typical modular box to connect contemporary prefab with a rich design history. Welcome HOMB indeed!
BeadBrick: A Modular Building System by Rizal Muslimin. Ancient building technology in the modern world. (Click on images to enlarge and play slideshow.)
A few recent projects remind us how powerful and cost-effective modular design can be in creating aesthetic effect by means of pattern-making, both in terms of hard costs (physical production) and soft costs (design effort).
Let’s start with a just concluded design competition exploring the innovative use of brick, one of mankind’s oldest modular systems. The very idea of looking for fresh thinking in a building technology now some 7,500 years old is in itself an intriguing concept; not surprisingly, the various solutions offered by the entrants feel both emphatically contemporary and deeply grounded in traditional sensibilities.
That duality is most evident in the programmatic requirement that design solutions be environmentally sustainable. Only in a culture that has lost some of its connection to nature would such a requirement need to be imposed from without. It’s particularly ironic in the context of a re-examination of brick construction which, by its very “nature”, was a “green” building method long before green meant anything but the color of leaves. But we suppose it’s better that we have to re-discover what our ancestors knew thousands of years ago than to disregard it altogether, as had been the case until relatively recently.
Two winning entrants to the 2011 Brickstainable competition embody the new synthesis of past and present. MIT student Rizal Muslimin’s proposal calls for a roughly triangular brick system that can form 2- and 3-dimensional assemblies by variously joining the bricks along vertical and horizontal axes. Bricks are fabricated using both digital and analog fabrication methods, another reflection of the dual character of the project brief. A second team comprising Kelly Winn, Jason Vollen and Ted Ngai of CASE New York was awarded a prize for their Climate Camouflage system. Drawing on recent developments in biomimicry, their submission explores the potential value of applying the age-old art of ceramics to addressing issues of thermal dynamics, self-shading, moisture reduction and other techniques needed to reduce our carbon footprint.
Winning entry to Brickstinable by Jason Vollen and Kelly Winn of CASE (New York). Once again one of nature’s signature modular geometries – the hexagon – is successfully applied to architectural design. Architects are drawn to this pristine geometry like bees to honey!
Beyond their shared ecological investigation, the Muslimin proposal is notable in expanding the traditionally humble, human scale of modular brick to the urban dimension. Unlike the banal repetitive grids of International Style architecture, or the scale-less wrappings applied to many contemporary skyscrapers, however, his imaginative eco-brick generates architecture that appeals to human sensibilities visually as well as empathically, in large part by the repetition of scalar, modular elements.
The newly launched DIY software Repper is as emphatically 2-dimensional as the Brickstainable proposals are 3-dimensional. If the name of their product doesn’t make it obvious, their tagline certainly does: “Everybody Loves Patterns”. They apparently like them so much they’ve developed the software for you (and us) to generate patterns of your (and our) own making that can then be applied to websites, products, interior design components and graphic design. Particularly appealing is that they don’t just leave you hanging with some pretty pictures on your screen, but have set it up so you can take your designs into production by linking up with various manufacturers and production facilities able to turn your visual patterns into a 3-dimensional reality.
We have no idea what this video is about, but it’s on the Repper site so we thought we’d share it with you anyway.
One of the marvelous things about modular pattern-making is that if the originating designer has done the job well, it’s rather difficult for the likes of us (and you) to generate patterns that are, well, downright ugly or mis-conceived. That’s because an aesthetic safety net is, in effect, built into the design unit, whose positive aesthetic qualities are retained when multiplied into a larger assembly. Coupled with the democratizing capabilities of mass customization, the promise of modularity as a tool for broadening the reach of good design continues to be fulfilled.
Not long ago, we were in conversation with a well-known real estate developer about our involvement in a potential project. At one point in the conversation the developer – known for his support of the arts – asked us about our motivations for being involved in the project. “So, do you want to do good? Or do you want to make money?” he quizzed us. To which we quickly replied “We want to make good money.”
The wittiness of our our quip aside, this exchange highlights a long-held perception in popular culture about business, namely, that it is by its own nature in direct conflict with the good. For the many people who have never seen the inside of a boardroom, the world of business would seem attract the worst sort of human characters, starting with the Borgias and ending with Gordon Gecko (leaving the not yet released Wall Street 2 aside). Of course, the reckless greed rampant among today’s bankers that we have all read about in the accounts of the Great Recession only reinforces this caricature.
Perhaps one of the most heartening characteristics of the post-boomer generation of entrepreneurs is its innate disposition towards marrying commerce with social good. Over the years this impulse has evolved from the charming benevolence we used to associate with youthful naiveté and lip service to a very real and very effective way of doing business. Should this trend continue there is a good possibility that the pervasive image of highly successful for-profit ventures being largely run by amoral cads fueled by personal gain will be substantially revised.
The company MIO is but one example of this welcome development. Founded in 2001 in Philadelphia USA by the brothers Salm (Isaac, the numbers guy and Jaime, the design guy, as they succinctly describe themselves), the design products company offers wallpaper, lighting, seating, shelving and storage, tables and accessories. We were initially drawn to Mio because they feature several modular products, including wall screens and wallpapers. But it was in reading the company profile on their website that we were really struck by the new spirit of entrepreneurship that is rising around us.
“MIO was founded,” the brothers Salm write, “with the objective of combining business rigor with environmentally and socially progressive design.” Right there we have a clear renunciation of the perceived dichotomy of doing good and doing well. “All of our products use materials that can be easily recycled with existing infrastructures, fit into closed loop manufacturing systems available today or fit seamlessly with natural ecosystems.” The familiar but nonetheless welcome commitment to sustainable design – only they truly implement it in their products. “We make customers participants in the lifecycle of designs through information and technology.” Optimism in the promise of what our age can offer. And finally, “Since our founding in 2001 we have encouraged our customers to grow into a greener, healthier, happier and more profitable future. Our design focuses on the needs of people today and aims towards the technologically advanced and responsible product experiences of tomorrow.” It’s hard to imagine a more welcome and sincere set of statements of what business can and should do. It seems all we need are the right people in charge.
Anyone who has either been a child or has the experience of parenthood is painfully aware that young people like to de-construct things. Naturally, since their knowledge base is still in formation, there is little discrimination as to what things may be subject to this impulse; one day it’s a ratty old doll that you had wanted to toss out anyway, but the next day it will be that miniature Rietveld chair from Vitra that you paid a pretty penny for and failed to put at a sufficiently high altitude to escape prying hands.
What can a parent do? Move everything of value out of the home and live inside rubber walls? Acquire only objects made out of cast iron with no removable parts? No, that does not seem practical. But there is an answer, at least when it comes to toys and other belongings dedicated to children’s play. As with so many of the challenges that beset mankind, the solution to the problem is – you guessed it – modular.
Now, you are probably thinking we have gone overboard in our faith in the salubrious effects of modularity. But think about it: when it comes to enabling a child to decompose material objects – which is, after all, a necessary phase in their mental development – wouldn’t it make more sense to start with the part and end with the whole, rather than the other way around? Eureka – of course it is! And get this: not only will we reduce incidents of mass destruction among the smaller set, we would also be encouraging in them the brain-building, life-affirming act of using their hands and minds to make form out of formlessness. It’s a win-win all around.
To aid in this quest, we are presenting here a roundup of some of the more appealing modular toys currently on the market, organized by type. Let the games begin!
Bricks and Blocks
The granddaddy of all modular products, LEGO is perhaps the most well-known toy in the entire modular universe. What’s less well-known is that it was largely invented by an Englishman who patented it in the 1930s, when modularity was gathering steam as a production method in industrial design. But it would be the Danish company whose name (an amalgam of ‘play well’ in Danish) would become synonymous with interlocking building blocks. What goes around, comes around, though; a Japanese company is marketing a product called Nanoblocks which to our eye are the spitting image of LEGO. Another variant is Bristle Blocks, whose connection architecture is formed from dense, short spikes; the same design appears under various brand names, including Stickle and Nopper Bricks.
Not far behind LEGO in historical longevity are Lincoln Logs, invented in the 1920s by the son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Given their pedigree, it’s not surprising that these blocks derive from an architectural theme and are largely used to construct buildings and objects of engineering, like fences and forts. Similarly architectural in character are Froebel blocks, devised by one Friedrich Fröbel in the 1840s. It just so happens that Herr Fröbel coined the term kindergarten and was among the first to codify its educational program, including – you guessed it again – the use of his blocks.
Turns out there is more of a connection between Lincoln Logs and Frobel blocks than meets the eye. There’s a legend that Daddy Wright was given a set of Froebel blocks when he was nine years old, a life-changing event which led him to become what he later became – an egomaniac in love with himself who happened to be a great architect. Okay, maybe just the architect part. One might also read some psychology into the fact that son of Wright invented a modular block system with a retrogressive perspective evoking the frontier days of early America, while the geometrically simplified Froebel blocks are now considered an icon of modernist design. Perhaps we’ll just leave this to the psycho-cultural crowd to sort out.
Of similarly modernist sensibilities are the numerous wood block systems currently offered by Naef, a Swiss company specializing in hand-crafted, high quality, non-motorized toys for infants and children. These handsomely designed ‘objects of art’, as their manufacturer prefers to call them, are among the few products here that would look equally at home in an adult environment as in a child’s.
Naef also happened to sponsor a design competition for a wooden toy which was won by a student at Virginia Tech; her modular design (above) uses magnetics to join together a single recurring shape in a variety of configurations.
Marble Blocks
Once assembled, building blocks tend to be pretty static affairs, which is understandable given that a principal goal in their composition is to not fall down. So what do you do if you want to inject an element of dynamism into the mix? Modify the blocks with a groove on one face sufficient to direct a marble down its path, that’s what. Once again the Swiss are on top of this game with their Cuboro wood blocks, launched in 1997. But the concept must have been around earlier, because in 2007 an American named Andrew Comfort designed a modular suite called Q-BA-MAZE made from plastic, apparently inspired by playing a marble maze game with his grandfather as a boy.
Vehicles
One of our favorites and a recent entry into the modular pantheon is Automoblox, a system of re-combinant cars and trucks made out of wood and brightly colored plastic. Beautifully designed and crafted, they are as much a delight to look at as they are to play with. The story of their creation and eventual success is nicely documented by their inventor in a series of web articles, which we recommend as reading for anyone crazy enough to want to bring something of quality to the market.
We might also put into this category all the electric train and car sets in which the tracks – and in the case of trains, the cars as well – come in interlocking segments that can be freely configured by their owner. Of the many such products Lionel trains stands in as similarly an exalted status within its category as LEGO does in its. Unlike the ongoing LEGO business, however, Lionel essentially ceased manufacturing in 1969 and was officially defunct by 1993. The divergent fortunes of these two icons of the toy industry make for an interesting comparative study as to why some products live on and others fade from view.
Electronics
For the mad scientist in your life, there is Snap Circuits, a modular system of interlocking parts which, when properly connected, perform all sorts of nifty electrically driven functions. Among them are a wind turbine, solar powered meters, an FM radio and motion detectors. We can attest from experience that boys go absolutely Lady Gaga for this kit of parts; in fact, they go so gaga they have a tendency to disassemble the handful of components within the system that are vulnerable to dismemberment. Thankfully there’s a brisk market for replacement parts, so science will continue to move forward despite their efforts to the contrary.
Dollhouses
Lest we suggest with our selection of categories that modular toys are predominantly oriented to boys, we include here some modular Dollhouses – not that we prescribe to outdated theories about gender of course (some of our best friends are girls). Still, as most of us are aware, dollhouses were traditionally oriented primarily to the lassies, who would presumably become acquainted with their future domestic duties by practicing them at a small scale. In most cases the dollhouse came already constructed or was first assembled by the Pater, since construction was as stereotypically a male skill set as interior furnishing and maintenance were female. Such neat gender divisions are nicely blurred when it comes to modular dollhouses, however, since the task of constructing the shell of the house out of the available parts becomes part of the user experience. Interestingly, many of the examples we show here were designed by architects, which might explain the prevailing mechanistic aesthetic, exemplified by a dollhouse in the form of modular shipping containers!
Sound Instruments
Music and modularity are closely intertwined, so its appearance among these categories should come as no surprise. Still, we were not entirely prepared for the charming device created by PKNTS called AMK (anagrams ‘r them). This is a modular sound toy designed for preschool children which, according to the designers, works in combination with a computer to transfer single sounds and sound sets to sound blocks, called Klangbausteine. Die Kinder can play independently with each module, or combine sounds by plugging blocks together.
Recyclable Toys
We conclude our survey with a neat and unexpected version of a modular toy. In 2007 Design21, a social design network, sponsored a design competition for a child’s toy with a requirement that it embody sustainability principles. Italian designer Barro de Gast came up with a terrific double whammy: he designed a packaging system for yogurt which, once the contents were consumed, could be transformed into a variety of children’s toys by means of interlocking tabs. Bravo Barro!
First of all, we’d like to know who said interior walls had to be flat as a pancake? Sure, it’s fine if you want to place a piece of furniture against them (although there’s usually a gap back there anyway because of the baseboard or chairrail). Sure, flat is good if you need to hang framed or canvas artwork on them. And sure, if you want to apply wallpaper to the wall, well, it really does need to be flat.
But let’s say you want to turn the wall into a piece of low-relief sculpture – after all, you’ve got enough painted and papered walls elsewhere in the space or building, and you really, really need some relief. Something to catch the eye by a dramatic play of light and shadow five, ten, twenty feet high, and just as long or longer. Something that would keep the eye moving up and down, left and right, in the way all good design should.
Left: “Uh, honey – I forgot to wear my pants today…” Middle: “I told you we were in a bubble!” Right: “Hey, looks like you lost a little weight there…”
Baby, what you could use is the modular wall surfacing system developed by modularArts, a Seattle-based company that started making this product in 2002. They offer over twenty different designs of modular panels, each thirty-two inches square and cast out of non-toxic mineral material. The panels interlock by means of a proprietary system of steel joints, and the company now offers a low VOC installation kit to further ensure sustainable building practices. Panels are light-weight and applied to sheetrock, so they can be installed by a finish crew using standard tools. The company has recently come out with a smaller scale module for use in residential contexts and for jobs smaller than typical commercial applications.
Being modular, of course, means the panels are flexible in terms of the overall size and configuration of the installation. That the modules are ‘pre-designed’ also brings an economy to the job insofar as it eliminates the need for costly customization while allowing for the creative disposition of the panels within the space.
The designs are on the whole abstract and freshly contemporary in appearance, with a taste of mid-century modern in a few of them. We also rather like that they’re uniformly white, which keeps the eye focused on the effects of light and shadow rather than be distracted by color or secondary patterns.
We are very fond of these modular storage cubes (and larger cousins), for several reasons. First, their shape – the cube is one of those Platonic solids that the ancient Greek philosophers believed represented the atomic units from which all physical matter derived. We might no longer believe in such theories, but there remains something eternally appealing about this very elemental, cosmically pure geometry. And of course, at the root of the cube is the square, a favored shape for modular design by virtue of its direct application to grids (just glance at some of our own posts, like this one and this one).
The formal simplicity of this product is nicely mirrored in its straightforward construction and means of assembly — no tools, simply a strong eco-friendly adhesive to hold it together (wow, that must be seriously sticky). And just when you think things might be veering toward the formally ascetic, their designers wrap them in colors and finishes that range from child-friendly playful to elegantly adult. The contrasting tone along the edges and back face add to the whimsy of the brighter versions.
Top and middle:Way Basics offers kits for a larger sized unit called the “Tribeca” as well as the standard cube size; both can be customized by varying either their interior sub-division or by grouping multiple units in different combinations. Bottom: buyers can take the possibilities of personalization a step further by mixing and matching individual components from different series as well as by adding their own touches in the form of adhesive decorations, casters, and whatever else they can imagine. The company has also added some neat accessories to its line, including hardware for spinning stacked cubes and tightly fitted storage baskets. Thankfully there are legal or moral limits to what one can do with all these options!
Speaking of eco-, these products are composed of zBoard, which is made from recycled paper and non-toxic materials, and which is available to others for use in their products. Way Basics has received a lot of recognition from green-minded organizations and reviewers for their approach to sustainable design. This doesn’t appear to be just a marketing ploy on the company’s part to bolster sales — they seem genuinely involved in pro bono activities to foster sustainability at large.
Oh, and then there’s the price point; at these numbers who can not like them?
Apparently very few, judging from the strongly positive reviews they’ve gotten on Amazon (not to mention the company’s website, but we’d kind of expect that!). We look forward to seeing some more pieces from this company in the future.
Flor carpet tiles, Alexander Girard, designer. Girard is best known for his contributions to American textile design while working for the Herman Miller Company from 1952 to 1975.
Co-creative design hits bottom with modular carpet tiles from the company Flor. The concept is elegantly simple: users create customized area rugs and carpeting by joining together square carpet tiles in a design of their choice. Tiles come in a broad array of colors and patterns, so there’s a pretty wide range of expressive possibility available. In addition to the company’s own tile designs, there are a few collections from guest designers, including Martha Stewart, famed textile designer Alexander Girard and, yes, Walt Disney (or at least, his eponymous company). Hey, kids deserve nice floors too! (And if you surround them with beautiful things when they’re young, maybe they’ll grow up to make the world an even more beautiful place than we did.)
In case you’re wondering how the tiles stay together…well, we did too. Dots. Or more specifically, adhesive dots that are applied to the underside of adjacent tiles sticky face up. When placed on each tile they knit the whole into a pretty tight mesh that isn’t susceptible to movement any more than a conventional rug would be.
Most of the face fibers in the tiles are made from nylon, while others are composed of natural fibers like wool or PLA (polylactic acid, a natural derivative from corn). The backings are a vinyl composite, some of which are made from recycled materials. According to the company, the carpet tiles meet or exceed the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Green Label Plus standards for VOC emissions (Volatile Organic Compounds) and are recyclable.
Looking at this product we are inevitably drawn to make comparisons with the traditionally crafted textiles of bygone eras. At the highest reaches of artistic refinement are the great rugs of the Islamist cultures, marvels of intricate patterning and quality of weave. Right alongside them we can place the best wall tapestries from the Middle Ages and the later classic rugs from Aubusson and other European centers of production. One can only imagine the time and effort that went into these pieces, both in terms of their actual production and the years of learning that it took to develop the craft and train the craftsmen who did them.
The there’s Flor. In place of the strand-by-strand approach of traditional weaving we have pre-fabricated squares of material. Instead of specialized craftsmen we have a product design company teaming with non-specialist users to create pieces of aesthetic and practical value. Instead of great works of art accessible only to the very affluent, we have a widely distributed article of embellishment available to large numbers of people. Such are the consequences of economic and artistic democratization.
By the way, the concept of modular floor coverings goes back quite a ways, and is not confined to the western hemisphere. The Japanese placed straw mats on the floors of their dwellings for centuries. Known as tatami, their approximately three foot by six foot proportion corresponds to the outlines of a person lying down – an interesting contrast to the abstract square geometry of the Flor tiles. A whole tradition of how to lay out the tatami inside a room evolved over time; in some cases the size of the room was even determined by the arrangement of the mats. Much of the tatami tradition has now disappeared from common use, but maybe a little of its spirit continues in its modern incarnation at Flor.
A competition was recently held to design a temporary pavilion for Governors Island, a historic former military encampment and Coast Guard base in New York Harbor. The brief called for the design of a shelter and gathering place for people participating in planned and impromptu events during the summer season. Entrants were instructed to design the installation as an efficient structure and as a model of sustainable construction. The competition was jointly sponsored by FIGMENT and The Emerging New York Architects Committee of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (ENYA) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY).
Ann Ha and Behrang Behin were selected as the winning team for their design Living Pavilion. The vaulted structure employs reclaimed milk crates as a modular framework for holding plant materials to serve as infill material (we hope it grows fast). The design recalls the graceful vaults built in America at the turn of the last century using the Guastavino tile arch system. Unlike the Guastavino works, however, this structure will be disassembled in October 2010 and its crates given away for re-use.
We rather like the integration of nature and structure in the interweaving of organic and inorganic matter, as well as the contrast of the qualities of soft and hard, organic and industrial, variegated and uniform.
Henry Ford, move over – the era of mass production has come to a close! Personalization is the name of the game now. People want a role in shaping the physical world around them to suit their individual needs, tastes and resources; to satisfy that goal they're looking for works of art and design that are reconfigurable, interactive and scalable. This blog explores how creatives are responding to the quest for customization, as well as the impact customization is having on the creative disciplines themselves.
