Jochen Gros’s scientific contributions

Custom-tailored mass production appears to be post-industrial and neo-craft in one. This ambiguity suggests that it can be approached from two different directions: from the side of the industry and from the side of the craftsman trade. Whereas there are numerous examples for the path from mass production to the mass customization, the development potentials of skilled trade businesses have barely been examined. Precedence for this is being set by the research project C-furniture. Its objective is the implementation of a strategy of mass customization through a network of CAD/ CAM-supported joinery workshops and a renewed competitiveness with regard to craftsmanship production. Their competitiveness could be further improved through art customization based on the new technologies.

It appears that people have almost forgotten that applied art once was an important part of the industry. In 1907, it was still possible for the Viennese architect Adolf Loos to assert that “without ornamentation we would only have to work four hours a day.” This sounds plausible if, for example, we consider the percentage of artistic output involved in building a cathedral or building the first, delicately chiseled brass telescopes. Today, the link between art and consumer goods has been broken as a result of the industrialization of processes and products. Applied art has been subsequently ousted from architecture and design. However, we will discuss in this chapter whether the new technologies and processes of mass customization could renew the association between art and consumer goods. In view of the ever-growing possibilities offered by computer-controlled tools and the general trend towards individualization and personalization, a renaissance in applied arts could become much likely a feasibility. Applied arts could embody the highest degree of expressing individualism and personality. This movement is supported by the capabilities of modern technology: In our digital age, the applications for art have no longer to be found only in the realms of handicrafts (or in industrial processes) but could derive out of the conditions of a mass customization system — resulting in, so to speak, art customization.

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