Prefabrication experiments - 520 - Digitally integrated business model

The introduction of CAD and eventually highly detailed modelling in architecture and construction has favoured the virtual planning of buildings ensuring the proper alignment and disentanglement of their systems. This digital-twin approach outlines a file-to-factory workflow that is driving a configure-to-order business model in offsite construction. A common interoperable CAD-to-CAM methodology decentralizes production offering multiple manufacturers in different contexts the opportunity to make and deliver project components where they are needed according to pertinent locus-based supply chains. 

In lieu of the heavy upfront capital investment that comes with managing a traditional vertically integrated factory with its design to manufacturing supply chain, a company can instead present a design system or platform (hardware and software) conceived for configuring projects in line withmanufacturing affiliates. Project FROG founded in California (2006) articulates this business model by harnessing the power of multiple suppliers and factories to deliver FROG-designed parts and processes specifically for classrooms. Once architects have designed the component-basedbuildings, FROG partners receive orders and through a synchronized design-to-manufacturing organization, supply FROG recognizable projects in any serviced setting.  Founded on digital cloud-based tools and their process integration, this contract manufacturer model multiplies capacity as IP and purchasing parameters can be shared among a network of factories. 

The now defunct Canadian company BONE Structure, one of the most advanced, digitally integrated home builders in North America while it operated, used a similar M.O. Projects were designed and documents prepared for manufacturing and then transferred to partners who fabricated site specific kits-of-parts. The cold-formed steel structure and other building parts were supplied by licensed fabricators. The system's uniqueness was not linked to a central factory but rather to a digital platform methodology identifying BONE homes from a central architectural direction and production framework. While this model reduces costs associated with a vertically integrated factory, it requires maintaining and cultivating partnerships with a stable pipeline of projects to maintain supplier loyalty and a best price management model. 

ps. Bone structure closed in December 2023, after the tragic death of its owner Marc Andre Bovet who was not only a great innovator but also a great friend.

Contract manufacturing decentralized production

Prefabrication experiments - 519 - Modlines

 

Modular volumetric construction is characterized as both a quick and efficient way of erecting multiple building types with scalability linked to repeatability. Residential units, hotels, student lodging, tract housing that can use similar designs from one project to the next offer important exponential procedural potentials for applying mass production principles to stacking factory-produced boxes. Chiefly determined by transport criteria which can vary according to cities and countries, factory-made 3d modules can be aligned, aggregated and multiplied as long as loads are rigorously controlled through vertically aligned bearing elements.

 

Aligning sections, corners and modlines is the rudimentary assembly strategy that regulates an efficiently engineered design-to-manufacturing process, as lining up boxes both horizontally and vertically simplifies construction and avoids costly position-based structural modifications, often proposed the name of architectural variability: angles and cantilevers are two design elements that require module specificity and complexify the production process’ necessary replicability from one module to the next. Variations rapidly increase costs and limit the common-sense approach. Organizing repetition in these elements can also help reduce manufacturing-to-onsite stitching headaches. 

 

Projects with a greater module consistency factor will streamline supply chains and production, conceivably leading to reduced costs. Showcasing or camouflaging modlines is therefore the basic design question. Showcasing modlines and boxes often enhances the connotations limiting greater uptake of modular volumetric construction as buildings are qualified as normalized or too standardized lacking architectural personality. Modlines are the vertical and horizontal geometric contours where the boxes meet and are attached; Boxes’ surfaces can create some structural redundancy as they increase material use when compared to conventional onsite systems.

 

Simply stitching these modlines on site creates an architecture that speaks to modular volumetric while other strategies include stitching and covering these lines by completing cladding on site to erase any visual links to the production process. Architectural design whether conventional or modular is a function of revealing or hiding a project’s underlying construction processes, modlines can be used as devices to nuance, illustrate or camouflage these architectonic ideas.

Modlines and modular sequencing