‘ZEMCH’ is an abbreviation of zero energy mass custom homes that encompass social, economic and environmental sustainability as a whole. Indeed, housing is a system of energy and environment and it is required to accommodate wants and needs of individuals and society, which are usually considered to be diverse and dynamic. The 'needs' factor often reflects minimum quality of end-user products (i.e. housing) and may embrace 'adequacy' being prescribed in conventional codes, while the 'wants' may be satisfied only if they are defined clearly by stakeholders (e.g. house-users and builder/developers) at the design decision making stage. 'Mass customisation' is an oxymoron or, perhaps, a paradigm case of a systems approach to identifying the aforementioned wants and needs that should be incorporated into the design of end-user products (or homes). Albeit increasing market demands for achievement of social, economic and environmental sustainability in housing today, conventional homebuilders (and housing manufacturers alike) who are often reluctant to spending extra time, money and effort for information gathering of new products and services are still barely able to adopt recently emerging innovations including mass custom design approaches to the delivery of sustainable affordable homes. The ZEMCH 2012 International Conference was a first attempt to establish an intellectual forum of interactive discussion on design, production and marketing issues surrounding the delivery of low to zero energy/CO2 emission mass-customisable homes and communities being built in developed and developing countries. The conference was organised by The Glasgow School of Art and held from 20th to 22nd August 2012. It was open to any stakeholders who are involved in housing research, business, teaching, and policy making and was enliven by nearly 100 ZEMCH researchers and practitioner from 23 countries.Clustering the worldwide expertise and confidence, the ZEMCH 2012 proceedings led to the creation of new culture highly relevant to any stakeholders who are involved in housing research, business, teaching, and policy making.