Prefabrication experiments - 470 - Soft densification and pre-approvals

 

Industrialization has certainly sped up production of every commodity and reduced their cost per unit. In an era of urgency, housing promoters were inspired by advances in manufacturing. In the wake of World War 2, the subsequent population growth and economic boom of the «Trente Glorieuses», suburbanization and development were linked to the automobile’s democratization. Bedroom communities planned with small uniform houses sprouted using assembly line principles. Along with housing, strip malls, and schools deployed similar modular planning methods in a generalized sprawl of mass-produced built form. 

 

Vast building initiatives consumed resources and quickly reorganized the live-work relationship around commuting. The current climate crisis reframes postwar suburbanization's dwelling provision strategies as wasteful and is providing a context for these bedroom communities to be reimagined as land reserves for soft densification in response to the need for affordable housing. As was the case in the first act of suburban building, communities are again turning to industrialization to quickly provide replicable housing types. To skip over some of the time-consuming permitting and planning associated with one-off projects, catalogues of preapproved designs that add-on, retrofit, or provide accessory units on existing tracts are an attempt to increase housing supply and curtail uncontrolled sprawl.

  

The town of Collingwood in Ontario, Canada has initiated a streamlined ADU (accessory dwelling unit) permitting process based on pre-approved designs, financial incentives, and landlord support tools for ADUs marketed as rental units. ADU’s can be delivered to backyards, attached to an existing structure, or included within the main dwelling unit. The designs are intended to ease design decisions and procurement. One of the preapproved designs is a a 516 sq feet modular volumetric unit, a design by Habitat 28 and Attimo Homes, engineered-to-order and delivered to any site circumventing the usual permit process. A streamlined procurement timeline includes client, permit department, fabricator and builder; this type of integrated supply chain of actors can certainly decrease housing supply challenges using industrialized building systems geared toward repurposing underutilized land resources.

Plan of the P50 by Habitat28 and Attimo Homes