Providing affordable housing solutions is a deepening problem for contemporary cities. Construction costs are soaring, dense urban form engenders logistic challenges, conventional construction is wasteful and traditional project delivery methods are organizationally messy. Considering these obstacles, it’s increasingly difficult to grasp why offsite construction hasn’t earned a larger portion of new housing starts. Although building construction employs wide-ranging mass-produced components, high levels of integrated systemic design and manufacturing remain elusive. Current crises are potentially inflecting interest in offsite methodologies with all stakeholders understanding the enduring web of nuisances that prefabrication has the potential to address. From efficiency to quality, architects are also rediscovering industrialization concepts for increased performance and to ensure higher quality projects.
Historically, architects have generally critiqued prefabrication as either too prescriptive or too rigid. Architectural studio FAR recently designed a six-floor urban block using a kit of precast reinforced concrete components. Wohnregal in Berlin, Germany built in 2019 celebrates a tectonic arrangement of columns, beams and slabs to assemble a warehouse/loft type edifice with large spans conducive to flexible layouts and dwelling patterns; 13-meter spans provide plenty of room for occupants to accommodate their needs. Floor to ceiling glass walls reveal the structure’s manifestly modern roots and the open spans devoid of load-bearing obstacles make it possible for the interior spaces to evolve over time. The components were dry assembled in six weeks requiring less on-site management and wasteful shuttering that would normally be required for an onsite traditionally cast equivalent structural system. Dry assembly also increases possibilities for long term circularity.
FAR’s proposal aimed to showcase a bridge between customization and industrialization, a subject that continues to be the crux of many architectural and industrial prototypes. Mechanical cores were also used to rationalize systemic distribution and increase flexibility as all adjacent spaces can be subdivided without affecting the overall structural or mechanical layouts. The urban multi-story warehouse archetype has long been associated with flexibility, changing occupants, and even mutating according to evolving functions. While Wohnregal maintains this type of structural openness, its prefab components highlight a symbiotic relationship between architectural form, rationalized structure, reducing costs, quicker construction and potential adaptability, all fundamental elements of any robust housing strategy.
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| Wohnregal dry-assembled precast components |
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