Apple's former design director BJ Siegel has recently established a mass-timber housing company named Juno. In this exclusive interview, he explains how it aims to design housing like it is a product.
Architect Siegel, who worked for 19 years designing Apple stores ? most recently as senior design director of real estate and development ? believes that Juno can create housing that dispels people's preconceptions about modular buildings.
"If we're going to bring productisation to the built environment for people to live in, that's counter to most people's idea of what an ideal place to live in is," he told Dezeen.
"Typically, architecture is bespoke, bespoke, bespoke ? one project to another, there's even a disparity or taboo about repetition within the culture of architecture." "So we have to design something that is meant to be repeated and that is accepted as higher quality ? almost aspirational."
Above: former Apple design director BJ Siegel recently launched Juno. Top: it is designing mass-timber housing in the US
Siegel believes that designing using modular elements will allow Juno to take advantage of design efficiencies and economies of scale while being able to continuously improve the product.
And if the homes are high quality enough, people will not be concerned that they are not unique.
"Taking it from product design, no one cares that your iPhone is the same as the next person's iPhone," he told Dezeen.
"If the qual...