Barbie Doll Houses vs. Lincoln Logs

Upon reading chapters 6 and 7 of Refrabricating Architecture, one thing kept barging into my mind: Barbie Doll houses and Lincoln Logs. I couldn't stop associating prefabrication with them. For one, the Barbie Doll House (some editions?) come with attachable rooms, already prefabricated and ready to use. However the Lincoln Logs are separate from one another, waiting to be built into something different every time they're used with prefabricated roofs and windows that vary in size.
     This is honestly the best way to most accurately describe the way I think about mass customization. According to the book, Henry Ford had one model and one color for roughly 20 years. It was a means of transportation and transportation only, not customization. They were put together on assembly lines quickly (in that time) and efficiently. What we want to aim to do to relate this to architecture is to not follow Ford's lead, but to focus on the few aspects that helped the company succeed. In architecture, every client is unique, and therefore their needs are as much. Unlike Ford, we can not simply build prefabricated houses and expect to be a huge success. As architects, it is our job to design spaces for people to live in comfortably. Prefabrication will never work for architecture.. or will it?
     I believe that it is possible for architects to achieve mass customization. But it's going to be a lot harder than it seems. It's simpler for different things, such as automobiles, because they generally have a design basis to start out with. (Four wheels, an enclosed cab, front and back bumpers, windows all 360 degrees for sight.) Yet, with architecture, the only specification we really have is that a human must be able to stand and walk around or through it, which isn't a lot if you think about it. This calls for more and more ideas of how to build something and what the process is to put it together, yet while still doing it quickly and efficiently. This is where the process gets sticky. Once you have a module, you must have the option to alter the model in some way, or else you'll end up with the same old module every time you replicate your building, therefore making it monotonous and boring.
     Mass customization is now what architects today are looking towards. In this day and age, people want everything at the tips of their fingertips and to have what they want when they want it. The whole "smartphone revolution" has flipped society around, now making us more impatient while simultaneously making us more demanding of our individual needs. This is where mass customization needs to be if it ever wants to succeed. We need to create a way to fabricate something quickly while still having the ability to change it, like Lincoln Logs. The logs themselves are straight from the factory, but unlike the doll house, it has the option to vary the building's height, size, whether there's a window or not, and more. You can even build a castle with a courtyard (my personal favorite as a kid). The dollhouse rooms were either stationary and immoveable inside the house, or were separate units that you could arrange around one another, but not completely transform.
     In the end, I think that we will need to find a solution more like Lincoln Logs than a dollhouse system to help end modular monotony, and hopefully we'll be able to find it soon.

~tada~