Prefabrication experiments - 427 - ML(urban block) - Modular reconstruction with Speedstac

 

The serial urban block symbolized 20th century prefabrication and industrialized construction. Framed by normalized government intervention using panelized or modular volumetric construction, planning logistics, zoning, arrangements, materials, and systems were all optimally coordinated from procurement to site installation. In the USSR in particular, the pattern buildings’ production was centralized; factories were set up and neighborhoods were completely built by national and local Gosstroys (state committees for construction) deploying similar design and construction methodologies geared toward efficient production. 

 

Since these buildings shared details, dimensions, performance criteria and components, they have also aged analogously and are susceptible to similar degradations. Sixty to seventy years after their initial commissioning some have either been demolished or most are in dire need of functional updates, repair, maintenance and in some cases, new conflicts that have destroyed parts of the structures. As the buildings share similar characteristics, their upkeep, renovation, or even restoration can lead to a form of standardized formula applied to their composing parts. 

 

The Speedstac^tm, an offsite manufactured retrofit unit made up of Integrated Structural Panels designed by architectural firm WZMH architects, proposes an industrialized building system for refurbishing or reconstructing parts of K buildings damaged by the Ukraine Russia conflict. The K acknowledges the Krushchyovka, nine story buildings produced by the USSR during the cold war. Arranged in the form of containers, the strategy could prove to be an efficient platform geared for adaptive reuse and recommissioning the typical prefab block. Contrary to the original systems, Speedstac uses high performance construction for both thermal and acoustic comfort.  The modular units’ panels include all necessary amenities, systems and function like a plug-in prosthesis for either parts of a building or for complete rebuilds. Planned in the context of the current crisis, the boxes could feasibly be used in any flat slab concrete structure stripped of its outdated services and envelopes to act as a support framework. The factory completed containers would simply slide into the structure.  

 

Produced for quick installation this type of functional unit could also be used for adapting existing commercial buildings as an affordable housing solution in cities with an aging building stock. 

Prefabrication experiments - 426 - SML(urban blocks) - Tenements and industrialization

 

Planning dwellings vertically around a common circulation core is symbolic of 19th century urbanization.  The urban block of flats is a fundamental component of the modern city. Characterized by repeating flats stacked 4-6 stories high, this type evolved and guided the development of emblematic localized patterns: tenements, in New York rose out the rapid urbanization of the city. Their organizations were based on a centralized stair well and sometimes a series of lifts giving access to each floor plate. The New York tenements built on 25 foot by 100 feet parcels divided for high density, allocated industrialized city form. Urban blocks have remained consistent and are both an affordable and sustainable strategies for housing provision. 

 

Offsite construction can be leveraged toward the urban block as dense housing has an engrained repeatability in spatial organizations, systems, amenities and interior functional elements such as rooms, baths and kitchens. Independent of any industrialized building strategy, rationality and frugality were the keys to the speculation that spawned these housing solutions. The typical floor plate layout is an example of standardization applied to housing design. Each unit could then be constructed from similar potentially mass-produced components.

 

Today’s affordable housing crises and the continuing urbanization of populations tends to both reviving the collective housing block and industrialized building strategies. From stacking reinforced concrete modules at Habitat 67 to the precast panelized blocks built throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War 2, prefabrication was used to invent and develop the collective housing typologies of the 20th century harnessing principles of bulk procurement and centralized logistics. Still, while stacking similar flats and floorplates lends itself to prefabrication, it has been marginally applied as each edifice in a series is usually built as a prototype. The postwar Eastern European socialist model deploying the pattern urban block repeating the same building systems and designs from context to context spearheaded a vision of industrialization underwritten by political choices; this model seems to be the only way of achieving the mass-scale application of offsite construction in collective housing supply.   

Prefabrication experiments - 425 - SMLXL(row-houses) - Interlocking modular dwellings

 

Industrialized housing solutions can display imaginative assemblies projecting homes in many variations. Stacked, aligned, interlocked or juxtaposed modular volumetric dwelling proposals employ densely packed or clustered organizations to rationalize building footprint, infrastructure provision and service distribution. Aggregating spaces and volumes in hive-like structures and arrangements using container-like prisms is the most common strategy. The manufactured units are completed before delivery and setting, a streamlined supply chain from planning to factory to site includes overwhelming advantages in terms of project timelines. Architectural singularity is perhaps the biggest challenge for modular volumetric’s rational stacking. 

 

A recent project for student accommodations by Dyson Industries displays a unique silhouette with normalized factory finished boxes. Each Cross laminated timber box is connected to supporting or adjacent units to shape a 6-unit agglomeration. Designed by WilkinsonEyre architects, a London based firm, the «modular village» is based on rigorously dimensioned and designed giant building blocks structured in CLT and clad in Aluminum. The boxes are massed in a unique volume with each recognizable box cantilevered or setback to achieve differentiated form from simple prisms. 

 

Even more complex organizations of interlocking modules have been explored leveraging geometries toward extreme compactness. Architect Liu Lubin's proposal for adaptable micro houses develops a modular composition from functional ergonomic sections, representing human postures and activities, resting, standing, sitting etc. The cross-shaped modular blocks can be matched and linked into micro-dwellings or larger mat-like collective housing blocks. Each cross-shaped unit is planned on a 600 mm grid within an overall dimension of 2,4m wide by 2,1 m deep. The stackable, enclosed, scalable, rotatable object envisions domesticity and its forms as changeable. A fibre-reinforced foam core composite makes it possible to easily lift and move the modules while achieving a smooth white ascetic surface inside and out. A comprehensively manufacturable product including factory finished doors and windows along with built-ins meticulously drawn-up to provide interior functionality, Lubin's vision deploys similar concepts used by Japanese Metabolists plugging dwellings together to establish novel forms of urbanity; shaping intense living environments that are determined by human form - a type of anthropomorphic collectivity.

Liu Lubin's cross-shaped modular volumetric proposal

Prefabrication experiments - 424 - ML(mat-building) - Fredenborg Houses

 

A proliferation of row-houses in multiple directions, the mat-building concept has been applied to low-rise, hi-density housing in varied types, scopes and scales; all share fundamental principles including compact rational plans, shared party walls, grid configurations, standardized constellations and common building methods. Some twentieth century prototypes also explored an ideal of adaptability or even expandability; modular arrangements could be composed in response to varying landscapes, evolving functional requirements determined by an entrenched systemic capacity to add units, organically breeding neighborhood fields.

 

System building, adaptability and modularity seem to go hand in hand, and their underlying approaches were posited by three generations of modernist architects from Walter Gropius’ expandable house system to Cedric Price’s steel houses and as seen in the last post, Steven Holl’s Dense Pack Dwellings. The creative association of building elements with harmonized volumes to achieve uniquely industrializable forms, at least in narrative, informed flexible carpets of territorial expanses. Their adaptability also pointed to enabling users to interact, design and construct their own environments. 

 

Danish architect Jørn Utzon, best known for the Sydeny Opera house, also explored affordable housing through modular, adaptable organizational systems. His proposal for the Expansiva Byg A/S building kit system was sold by local timber builders and marketed as flexible, adaptable and expandable. The modular components were standardized for repetitive detailing and for maximum user involvement in their assembly.  The basic post and beam structure with a shed roof was completed with panels for walls, roofs and normalized openings regulated for the overall modular scheme. Employed for Utzon’s Fredensborg Houses (1959–1963) described as flowers on the branch of a cherry tree, the archetype outlined a clustered planning of housing units surrounding collective courtyards accessible from public walkways inserted in the spaces between units all leading to a centralized public square. The link between modern grid principles and classical urban concepts were united to shape a field of dynamic dwelling spaces. Built as individualized patio houses anchored to site topography, each unit was placed according to ideal conditions for views, daylighting and shelter from prevailing winds. 

Expansive Byg A/S building system by Jørn Utzon