The townhouse is arguably the most appropriate housing type to adjust for prefabrication. Tracts are apportioned into aligned lots with similar dimensions and organizing principles. Based on repeating these patterns, coherent streets of townhouses iconically represent dense city dwelling without the sameness of housing blocks and bars connoted with 20th century mass housing attitudes. Construction techniques are also shared among neighboring units, each portion, part of an open-air assembly line, using the same processes, materials and industrialized parts; The balloon and platform timber fames spanned from one party wall to another supported stacked stories, flats and made it possible to build a plethora of workforce housing blocks in evolving modern cities.
Today many of these emblematic city blocks are still standing, restored and being updated with infill replacements. These infill dwellings are conducive to rationalizing construction as some elements can be repeated over multiple project settings: dimensions, heights, materials, organizations. Module, a creative modular housing company from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA has made this type of infill dwelling their sustaining business model. While typologically different from party wall developments, similar site parameters are scaled to deploy a modular volumetric platform for zero-energy ready townhouses. The factory produced boxes can be stacked two to three stories high.
Like most modular companies attempting to showcase a successful industrial process for greater productivity and affordability, the company offers an all-in-one shop from design to fabrication to construction with some adaptable townhouse models even evolving from 2 to 3 floors over time, based on fundamental core-house principles. Catalogued on-line, engineered-to-order boxes are produced in the factory while foundations and services are completed on site. Boxes are then delivered and anchored to site foundations, reducing schedule length and maximizing offsite quality control. The infill patterns also simply the procurement process as multiple townhouses can be manufactured simultaneously with the same production parameters. Using contemporary 3d modelling, virtual design and construction, performance can also be monitored over time taking control of design, fabrication, delivery and operational aspects of the home to further optimize the houses’ lifecycle and durability.
Module's Infill prototypes
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