The made-to-measure house: from an ideal home to a palace between the 19th and 21st centuries

The made-to-measure house represents the ideal dwelling which for many people today puts pressure on the concept of “type”: the schemes to sell new dwellings, TV programmes on the home, even such a symbol of industrial standardization as IKEA, all underline the importance of customizing residential interiors. Arguably, this is the arrival point of a reversal in the trend following the years of the Modern Movement when the “type” and its repeatability became the ideal that informed both the ethics and aesthetics of architecture and interior design. Post WWII, a critical revision of rationalism h d already emphasized new values (the presence of the ancient, of art, of sentimental items next to the modern) and introduced corrective actions such as the flexibility of modular furniture, however, post-modernity and the digital revolution – which has cancelled traditional geographical and temporal limits – seem to have fragmented the idea of “type” into a myriad solutions ad personam.