Abstract
Standardized modular building systems (Abbreviated as SMDS in the following) provided the perfect solution to the post-WWII explosion of population globally. Until now, it is still the default choice in most social housing project for it is economic, efficient, and reliable. It incorporates a technology that fulfills the citizen’s right to dwell decently and thus makes possible a sublimation of our Utopian hopes. While SMDS is a magic wand for policymakers to solve the housing crisis, its standardization has caused social, cultural, and political problems in cities for the homogeneity it generates – in most cases, such homogeneity equals a taken-for-granted form of minimalism, which in turn shows an ignorance of the culture and history of the site. And as the culture and history are flattened, SMDS becomes an ahistorical and uncultured object, losing its ability to communicate with its dwellers. This thesis, Post-Standardization, probes specifically into standardized prefabricated façade panels and balconies in social housing projects and aims to create a design process where individual preferences and choices are respected and considered, setting new guidelines and norms in mass housing projects. After the Second World War, SMDS was favored by both communist and capitalist countries to accommodate the booming population efficiently. In 1924, Mies van der Rohe wrote: “if we would achieve this industrialization then social, economic, and artistic problems would be easily solved.” Here, the standardized, simple, and pure geometry symbolized the hope to abominate inequality both socially and aesthetically, freeing architecture from
