PLEASE FIND SOME REFERALS, INSPIRATIONS, INFORMATIONS, DOCUMENTATIONS ,...

The "yourHOUSE" project was part of the "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling" exhibition (July 20, 2008–October 20, 2008) at the MOMA of NY.

Mr. Sass, an architecture professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has designed prefab housing for New Orleans. He proposes shipping a laser-cutting system with the pieces, which can be assembled with a rubber mallet, so homeowners can erect their own houses.

"yourHOUSE is a research and design project conducted by MIT's Design Lab that is breaking new ground as a pioneer in prefabricated home construction. With a thorough understanding of the past, an extensive utilization of new technologies of the present, and with an awareness of the possibility and growing need for low-cost and high-quality housing, yourHOUSE is set to change the future of home construction."

Link to the yourHOUSE website. You can also find some information on the Physical Design Co website.

"The OS (OpenStructures) project explores the possibility of a modular construction model where everyone designs for everyone on the basis of one shared geometrical grid. It initiates a kind of collaborative Meccano to which everybody can contribute parts, components and structures."

This was probably the first time I saw such a broad range of digital woodjoints solutions. Verry impressive and inspiring ;)

"Wood Joints are fascinating! They embellish old furniture and wood constructions of ancient Japanese temples alike. Everytime we come across them, we are filled with admiration: Admiration for the skill of the master craftsman, as their creator, but also admiration for the balance between function and beauty, which turns the furniture or temple into a work of art.

With the onset of industrialisation, the traditional wood joints have been banned more and more to the background. Manufacturing has to be above all efficient, so there is no more room for traditional wood joints. Or is there?

As computer-controlled wood processing machines move into the cabinet-makers' workshops, the way two pieces of wood are joined together in a construction needs to be reconsidered. The digital wood joints were developed in the course of several years of reserch at the C...Lab of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach, a project headed by Prof. Jochen Gros and Designer Friedrich Sulzer.

The result of this research are 50 digital wood joints, devided into frame joints, board joints and carcass joints. These wood joints are meant to inspire you, so that you will experiment and use them for your projects or develop your own digital woodjoints. We provide each wood joint in various data formats. Download the complete package (49MB) and you get them all including a PDF-Guide and suggestions for use. Or download only 4 examples and seperatly the instructions for these examples.

We are looking forward for the submission of your modifications and pictures of implementation."

You can download them via the flexiblestream.org website here.

Text and pictures from flexiblestream

Is it the final dream of all prosumers (and the end of all designers) ?Here is a selection of wath is perhaps a main evolution in the way of design and consume things.

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The REPRAP (A Self-copying Manufacturing Process) project is perhaps one on the most important. A project to save the world... ...or at least to improve it. For more details see the main web site. However, here is a brief summary: A universal constructor is a machine that can replicate itself and - in addition - make other industrial products. Such a machine would have a number of interesting characteristics, such as being subject to Darwinian evolution, increasing in number exponentially, and being extremely low-cost. A rapid prototyper is a machine that can manufacture objects directly (usually, though not necessarily, in plastic) under the control of a computer. The RepRap project is working towards creating a universal constructor by using rapid prototyping, and then giving the results away free under the GNU General Public Licence to allow other investigators to work on the same idea. We are trying to prove the hypothesis: Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor. All good projects have a slogan, and the best have a slogan that reeks of hubris. RepRap is no exception. Our slogan is:

"Wealth without money..."

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

THINGIVERSE Thingiverse is a place for you to share your digital designs with the world. We believe that just as computing shifted away from the mainframe into the personal computer that you use today, digital fabrication will share the same path. Infact, it is already happening: laser cutters, cnc machines, 3D printers, and even automated paper cutters are all getting cheaper by the day. These machines are useful for a huge variety of things, but you need to supply them with a digital design in order to get anything useful out of them. We're hoping that together we can create a community of people who create and share designs freely, so that all can benefit from them.

http://www.thingiverse.com/