Prefabrication experiments - 525 - Making Sense of Modular

 

The latent economies of modular volumetric construction include bulk purchasing aligned with reliable supply chains and predictable demand, reducing waste at every step of the manufacturing process and harmonizing design with fabrication and assembly parameters. Like any other industrial product, the rationalized relationship between standardization and design variants is the baseline for increasing efficiencies and scaling economies. Variants, in architectural design, are necessary to respond to particularized client demands; this customization constrains the overall process toward specificity which has always been the model of conventional construction. 

 

Adapting manufacturing to construction's «prototype» zeitgeist requires conceptual positions that look beyond the historically acquiesced bespoke building. In a modular volumetric construction project, process efficacy is related to reducing the number of unique modules produced for a project. A greater number of individualized units increases per-unit costs, while high levels of repetition can drastically reduce per-unit costs, following the underlying logic of mass production. 

 

A project where each module is a flat, for example in student housing or hotels, modularization can attune the factory to one type of module used in one or even over multiple projects. Collective housing blocks can also include reproducible organisations and parameters where apartments are composed of one module for wet cores and other modules for adjacent spaces. Aiming to synchronize production with design variants is possible by designing modularized replication of subassemblies into projects according to their production criteria - this is basic platform theory. 

 

Minimizing variants and working with catalogued or made-to-stock modules can increase the reproduction factor. A quotient of total number of modules divided by typical modules can explain potential gains in production efficiencies. For example, a quotient of 10 in a project of 100 units indicates 10 typical modules are required to complete and deliver the building. One repeating module is used 10 times, higher numbers indicate greater potential economies - As a quotient of 100 would indicate 1 identical module for the whole building. This can further be optimized by designing the sequence of modules into the building planning to improve just-in-time delivery - this type of DfMA - Design for manufacturing and assembly approach bridges architectural design with process and delivery logistics.

the logic of modular volumetric construction