After FluidForms (read this old post), here is another innovative Swiss company based on mass-customization and user co-created content, mShape.
And they use too multi-layered wood and computer controlled milling machines, but here complexity comes from the behaviour of the users, from their co-creation that generates “a population of tables”.

It’s not an open p2p marketplace, it’s not a peer production example, but it is a very good example of user co-created design. You can’t buy other users’ tables, so it’s not a marketplace and relationships between users are not fostered (nor they are interested in them). Therefore, it’s not a community but a co-creation business/service.
Actually, you can buy an mShape table in two showrooms in Zurich, where:

Our partners can provide you with a Nokia mobile phone for the time of your design

So the most important thing of mShape is that it works using mobile techologies i.e. easy of use tecnologies that have a wide reach. Just note that every project that is strongly based on user participation needs an enabler designer rather than a conventional one, a designer capable of developing a meta-design project where the user will be the conventional designer.
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After the first post and second post about Open Architectural Design at MIT, here you can find a thesis about the MIT Open Source Building Alliance Operation (OSBA) developed by Kalaya Kovidvisith at MIT and submitted on June 2007: “Open Source Building Alliance Ecology. The Internet Framework for Consumer Driven Participative Design”.

The primary purpose of this thesis is to apply a theory of Open Source to building industries, and illustrate how the augmentations of Internet services can improve the usability of Open Source for the design-build architecture.
This thesis proposes then HOU.SYS, an online community for the Open Source Building, as an alternative approach for a participative platform in mass customization of small housing and its related products, technologies and services.

This thesis reexamines the basic assumptions of how building products are distributed through the Open Source environment. By analyzing the impact of e-Business and Internet technology driving community participation, the integration of (1) four online Business models: Dell, Open Source, iTunes, and eBay, and (2) the advent of mass-customization through the revolution of Internet technology, Computer Aided Design (CAD), and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) for architecture and architectural product design and development will be established. The results of this evaluation identify the effective factors for the Internet augmentation framework to achieve the usability of Open Source for the design-build housing industry, and reinforce the changing relationship between home buyers, architects, and manufacturers prior to making a final housing product.

And from the conclusions:
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After the first post about the MIT Open Source Building Alliance Operation (OSBA) project, here is another one reporting the paper that started the project, written by Larson K., Intille S., McLeish T.J., Beaudin J., Williams R. E.¹ .

In this paper, we argue that new technologies and strategies for design can enable a more responsive model for creating places of living.

We describe work by the House_n Research group at MIT to develop a conceptual framework for Open Source Building, and to prototype and test both alternative construction methodologies and new design tools that support it. We believe that this approach could transform how homes are created over the next 10-15 years, and create new pathways into this $322 billion per year market for companies producing materials, products, and services for the home.

[...] we advocate the replacement of generic speculative housing development with an open source building model where:

• developers become integrators and alliance builders, offering tailored solutions to individuals;
• architects design design-engines to efficiently create thousands of unique environments;
• manufacturers agree on interface standards and become tier-one suppliers of components, producing systems that share common sensing and communications infrastructure;
• builders become installers and assemblers;
• customers (home-buyers) become ‘designers’ at the centre of the process by receiving personalised information about design, products, and services at the point of decision.

• Scenario part 1 — developers as integrators
  Residential developers now specialise in the process of acquisition, financing, and an increasingly complex public approval processes. They form business relationships with competing ‘builder-integrators,’ who manage the process of delivering individually tailored homes.
• Scenario part 2 — design, configuration and industry standards
  Multifamily buildings are the first to adopt ‘open source building’ strategies. With a lengthy approval process, buildings must be designed long before an apartment buyer enters the process. To decrease risk and increase sale prices, developers now separate the building into two components: an open loft base building ‘chassis’ that efficiently integrates the essential services of a building, and customised ‘infill,’ configured by the user at the point of sale, fabricated to order and quickly connected to the chassis.
• Scenario part 3 — fabrication and installation
  When a design is complete and the buyer transaction executed, a description of each system is transmitted to the integrator’s assembly factory. The integrator receives just-in-time deliveries of the required components from manufacturers and distributors, taking advantage of supply chain management tools similar to those developed in the automotive industry. With standardised connections, and tighter dimensional tolerances, the fit-out takes no more than 10 days. Although the systems of the home are functionally integrated, they are also carefully disentangled so that each can be changed during design or use without affecting the performance of the larger system. Most devices and systems have IP addresses and communicate wirelessly or by powerline carrier, allowing, for example, lighting control to be made and changed during the occupancy of the home.

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Notes:

1. Larson K., Intille S., McLeish T.J., Beaudin J., Williams R. E., “Open source building — reinventing places of living”, BT Technology Journal, Vol 22 No 4, October 2004
   
   http://pubs.media.mit.edu/bttj/ [↩]

I’ve just discovered that people at MIT are studying how to develop Open Source Houses and therefore Open Architectural Design projects.
MIT Open Source Building Alliance Operation (OSBA) is a project run by the House_n department, and it will operate as an open source organization. A website will be established for idea generation, technical evaluation of OSBA recommendations, and public comment. OSBA members and affiliated academic researchers will engage in research to develop, test, and establish prototypes and test beds.

It is a very well structured project, and it addresses in a clear way the mass-customization aspects and the opportunity to let people modify their homes through time. Also, we should mention that they are addressing a very important issue such as distributed generation (here you can find an introduction) and how it could be implemented in future buildings.
I hope they will address Passive Houses, low technologies and sustainable materials, processes and business too.

This project is a clear sign how we are witnessing now that Open and Peer-to-Peer principles are spreading to design too. They’re still in a stage where there isn’t yet a consciously building of the community, and that’s where the Open Peer-to-Peer Design methodology and the openp2pdesign.org project should find their place.

The goal of the Open Source Building Alliance is to develop key components of a more responsive model for creating places of living where: (1) Developers become integrators and alliance builders to offer tailored solutions to individuals, (2) Architects design design-engines to efficiently create thousands of unique environments, (3) Manufacturers agree on interface standards and become tier-one suppliers of components, (4) Builders become installers and assemblers, and (5) Customers (home buyers) become “designers” at the center of the process by receiving personalized information about design, products, and services at the point of decision.¹

Rather than any singular overriding design or vision, this new model aims to adopt what is basically a flexible, mass-customization home design system — one that gives homeowners themselves the tools to design their own living spaces. Think Apple and Dell instead of Toll Brothers.

“The future of housing is really much more of an industrial design process than a craft,” says Kent Larson, an architect and director of the House_n Research Consortium and the Open Source Building Alliance (OSBA) at MIT.

“Ultimately, we’re moving toward an open source (home design) system that’s very distributed. The end user will be empowered with web-based tools and configurators to construct something unique and singular.”²

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Notes:

1. http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/projects.html#osba [↩]
2. http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/dual-perspectives/2009/01/20/Towards-the-Open-Source-Home [↩]