Préfabrication experiments - 446 - Mass Affordability - 07 Low-tech Modular

 

 

Making housing affordable through industrialized construction ought to be a straightforward undertaking. Large numbers of repeating units scaled and patterned over easy to put together systems can be applied massively. Previous blog posts discussed mobile homes, lightweight timber framing or even large concrete panel systems in pre and post war Europe. All deployed a simple but effective recipe: Sharing building systems among numerous projects and across contexts requires less design resources and can further be democratized in a type of sharable housing kit outlined by basic parts tweaked to respond to functional and regional parameters.

 

British architect Walter Segal introduced DIY open frame structure to 20th century architectural practice Self-build and similar ideas can be traced to Japanese traditional post and beam structures repeating dimensions and principles to achieve an efficient and resilient housing supply.    Elemental Architects’ Incremental Housingreaffirms these simple principals of mass-producing parts adaptable enough to be arranged and even rearranged according to needs in an open-source design strategy. 

 

A recent proposal by Bernardo Horta for a co-housing community in Brazil, the Cumbe Housing Project, outlines a skeletal post and beam structure to shape modular living units that can be used as stand-alone micro dwellings or combined in a multidirectional framework to create multi-room or even multi-flat dwellings. The bolted columns and beams frame a double shed-roof portal frame section. Gable ends could be combined with other modular units to organize a linear row-housing strip. Precut timber parts are used for the structure, recycled tires filled with concrete are suggested for foundations and end walls are infilled with wattle and daub influenced by vernacular building traditions. Front and back elevations are left to be customized according to occupant needs and could feasible be infilled with low-tech local materials that do not need any intensive labor. Horta’s proposal intends that all other required elements, doors, windows and other building pieces be added and adapted according to local supply chains and even changed, replaced or reconfigured over time as owners’ economic conditions and product supply evolves.

Cumbe Housing system components

Prefabrication experiments - 445 - Mass Affordability - 06 - Typical Cell

 

Recognized for his contributions to the Russian avant-garde and Suprematist Movement in the early 20th century, El Lissitzky, a polyvalent designer/artist, embodied a total work approach to developing his ideas.  The designer as an actor for social change capable of improving living conditions was at the heart of his artistic and design positions. While his list of built architectural works is short, consisting of only one building (a printing plant), he left a long trail of prospective explorations and their representations. One of his experimental paper projects, at the intersection of housing, architecture, industrial and furniture design, the F-type Residential Cell (1927) projected a reproducible dwelling unit studied to harmonize all dwelling functions in a comprehensively integrated design. 

 

Built-in furniture composed the flat’s architectural arrangement around a split-level section accessible from a lower floor.  The potentially mass-manufactured unit was articulated around a two-flight stairwell dividing day and night spaces. The two-level organization shifted from the ordinary one floor flat showcasing that stacked units in a housing block could include multiple levels with the spatial qualities found in single-family dwellings. The modular multifunctional built-in services would facilitate production and lower construction costs as all cabinetries would be made from the same basic components and catalogued design options. The cell's amenities previewed a future for the house or dwelling as an ergonomic machine capable of responding to modern needs. Storage walls, transformable cabinets, movable partitions, all presented a flexibility and changeability adaptable to varying living patterns. 

 

Foreshadowing modern kitchen design, the F-type was equipped with modular cabinets that could be combined, based on the same dimensionally coordinated cases, to arrange multiple organizations. Looking at housing from the perspective of a cabinet or furniture design scales and applies the production and productive attitudes of component modularity to architecture; Built-ins not as onsite built elements but embedded in typical flats. Borrowing and adopting synergies from industrial design to achieve truly holistic architectural works, that could be repeated en masse to achieve what industrialization has rendered in every other industry apart from architecture: productivity, greater quality and reduced costs. 

Typical cell model photos

Prefabrication experiments - 444 - Mass Affordability - 05 - Rational flexibility

Providing accessible and affordable dwellings requires the rationalization of expenditures through a coherent spatial, structural and functional organization along with efficient material use optimizing each square centimeter of built form. This parsimonious vision outlines the fundamental aspects of the “core-house” as a tool for expandable growth based on user needs and agency. Controlling costs through service core principles has been applied to single-family dwellings with some success (https://prefabricate.blogspot.com/2018/12/prefabrication-experiments-182.html). These same ideas have also been applied to office towers or multi-unit residential edifices to offer opportunities to moderate construction costs while offering systemic adaptable planning.

 

Typified by a 10 storey multi-unit prototype built in France in the early 1970s by the modernist architect sibling team of Luc and Xavier Arsène-Henry, the Montereau residential core-tower borrows from 20th century office building organizations and blends it with adaptable housing design. The pinwheel plan is configured around a vertical circulation core. From the centre point, long spanning concrete slabs structure 4 radiating unit-spaces per floor arranged on a 900 mm grid. Each rectangular flat 13.5m x 6 m is then articulated to the floor plan by a mechanical vertical conduit used for plumbing and electrical service distribution. 

 

Around these service hubs, each unit can be composed to relate to two different orientations with multiple configurations. Further, core-adjacent spaces can be fitted-out by occupants using the predetermined 0.9x 0.8 m channel as an evolving planning device. An exterior balcony bounds the floor plate providing exterior spaces for each apartment. All rooms and living spaces’ dimensions are a multiple of the 900 mm grid and were divided by prefabricated stressed skin panels held in place by removable compression screws making spatial arrangements flexible, malleable and adaptable. Architects envisioned typical floor plans for each occupant to adopt or modify according to their own living patterns. 

 

Not designed specifically with low cost in mind, the frugal planning was geared toward changeability. However, the same principles that make the space flexible, free and open floor plates, unfinished spaces, repeating mechanical cores, a rigorous structural grid, standardized interior systems along with predetermined parameters to control change can also help reduce construction costs. 

Montereau flexible planning scheme

Prefabrication experiments - 443 - Mass Affordability - 04 - Robotic Masonry

 

Expressed by harvesting and arranging local, low-tech materials, masonry construction's character has always conveyed a type of humbleness and affordability linked to its relative simplicity. Building any compressive structural form with dimensionally stable elements geometrically dry-locked or bound with mortar, reinforced or unreinforced, has provided both versatile and long-lasting buildings. Artisan-based masonry construction has also been highly industrialized: Blocks, bricks and binding agents manufactured with rigorous precision, constituent stability and modularity can be stacked for bearing or cladding wythes. Recent labour shortages, specifically in traditional trades, have had many looking at novel ways of introducing digital technology to the age-old process of bricklaying to refresh its pertinence and conserve its historic frugalness. 

Digital fabrication, using robots, is being examined for making complex shaped bricks or blocks to create structurally informed geometries, to stack bricks in intricate patterns that would be difficult for even the most skilled mason, or simply to make quick work of a running bond. Emerging Objects, Gramazio and Kohler or even ShoP Architect's parametric masonry work at Mulberry House in New York present a new set of opportunities and parameters for masonry-based assemblies. Can the link between new technological potentials and affordability be found in replacing an ageing workforce with flexible site-based automation and digital mechanization ? 

Related to how large scale 3d printing is presented to produce affordable dwellings with on-site mechanization, SAM (semi-autonomous mason) and Hadrian X (fastbrick system), are similar versions of numerically controlled robotic arms. Both precisely place units to shape architectural form. SAM, conventionally completes the process of installing cladding by delivering, buttering, and setting bricks at a rate of 3000 bricks per day (500 is the average rate for a mason). Hadrian X proposes a comprehensive house building process. The Fastbrick Wall System is a combination of blocks, adhesive and an exterior acrylic stucco to produce a finished wall. The system could conceivably be delivered to any site. Further the aligned cores within the proprietary blocks are used to reinforce the system with steel rebar and easily distribute wiring and plumbing to produce a comprehensive building system.

top left: Emerging Objects; top center: Gramazio Kohler; top right: SHoP Architects
bottom left: SAM; bottom right: Hadrian X

Prefabrication experiments - 442 - Mass Affordability - 03 - “Unfinished”

 

Providing adequate affordable housing in the context of labor shortages, massive population displacements, and increasing construction costs requires inventive propositions to address an unsolvable problem. Building repetitive pattern houses and designing smaller units have proven to be a way forward in eras and contexts requiring urgent supply. Offsite construction and prefabrication were deployed during similar times of crisis to respond to exploding demand; Even while prefab systems proved an effective way of increasing output, the bare bones construction materials and methods linked to their affordability proved to be their downfall as prefabs became associated with shoddy construction.

 

Another idea linked to reducing costs has appeared from time to time with equally connoted results: providing adaptable systems that can be customized and even finished by their occupants. Unfinished, The DIY house, The Naked House, The Grow Home and even The Half House designed by Pritzker winner Alejandro Aravena identify home finishing as an important part of initial costs. Most of these proposals argued for a mechanical core, structural system, and climatic shell to provide basic and initial dwelling spaces. Elements left for personalized fit out would be completed by owners and as they became economically feasible or required. Some have gone so far as servicing unfinished bathroom and kitchen spaces with plumbing and electrical distribution capped at fixture fittings.

 

The upfront costs of these unfinished houses can be 40-50% less than a comparable finished product. While this can be an economic advantage and even help reduce borrowing budgets, it’s not clear how the long-term finishing will impact overall costs, or if finishing one’s own home is applicable in all contexts, or culturally tainted. Still strategies like The Naked House presented at the Venice Biennale in 2016 as part of a British team of designers proposes generic spaces that can be functionally determined and altered during the home’s lifespan. Reducing upfront material use certainly provides an interesting way of lowering construction costs, however piecework fit outs done one at time, can increase total costs of building providing a framework for higher profit margins and reduced responsibility for builders; a naked house is certainly less expensive than a completed house however it is also just that: unfinished. 

Above left: Wikihouse (DIY); Above right: Half house (Aravena); Below center: Naked House

 

Prefabrication experiments - 441 - Mass Affordability - 02 - State Organized Construction

 

Industrialization and the subsequent marketplace commodification proved that the invisible hand (Adam Smith’s vision of the free market) commanded mass production, by replicating standards, tasks and procedures to reduce costs and normalize quality. A centralized strategy that supports and harmonizes supply chains with design, manufacturing and commercialization is the basis of any successful production strategy.  Similar ideas have been envisioned to provide affordable housing through highly integrated industrial procedures.    Government run factories for precast concrete panels, volumetric modular units and components highlighted postwar production in the USSR as the socialist republics perfected building systems. The panel block was the most iconic result inspired by and patterned over Ernst May's experiments in Germany in the early 20thcentury. May’s ideas were expanded by the USSR’s construction policies. Planning, designing, manufacturing and onsite assembly were all synchronized by a centralized procurement and provision strategy based on typical buildings shaped by a modular grid: a major dimension of 3m with a minor dimension of 30cm, controlled by a rigorously applied 10cm coordination matrix.    This productive model motivated many other countries; An American delegation traveled to the USSR in 1969 to gain a better understanding of the government run factories and study how off-site construction was generating the kind of housing output that the US required. Many of Operation Breakthrough's systems were derived from panelized or precast mega block construction.    Program underwriters’ justification for high levels of industrialization foreshadowed arguments made today: 40-50% less labor, 35-45% faster, higher quality and year-round construction. The Gosstroys, state construction committees, at the republic, local and city levels oversaw all Soviet construction from providing sites, financing, typical building designs, to harnessing new materials, machines and methods. Academic and research institutes governed by the centralized Gosstroys framed research grants according to specific innovation potentials. This concentrated method of decision making certainly made it possible to construct vast amounts of housing, however it also formed some of the negative connotations still haunting construction's industrialization.    Perhaps the lesson for today's housing crisis is the need for government involvement to stimulate and standardize processes while encouraging open design frameworks to avoid the total repetition of patterns that gave us the brutal panel block. Nine storey panel block from 1967 catalogue of typical buildings

Prefabrication experiments - 440 - Mass Affordability - 01 - The Balloon Frame

Urbanization, population migrations, political instability and economic crises engender globalized pressures that make suitable and sustainable housing provision one of the most imperative challenges of the 21st century. The generative potential of manufacturing applied to housing supply provides a renewed topic for reforming longstanding productivity issues in conventional construction. The ten next posts will look at some of industrialization's successful strategies for responding to vast housing crises of past eras.

 

The expansion of populations on a new continent in the early and mid 1800’s outlined requirements for everything from houses to barns, to places of worship and everything in between. The mass adoption of light timber framing, specifically the balloon frame, in the midwestern part of the USA soon branched out to every part of America. As opposed to heavy post and beam construction with complex joinery to ensure stability and durability, the cruder framing required only milled timber and cut nails to create buildings of any type and shape. 

 

Sometimes attributed to George W. Snow, a Chicago carpenter, the light timber frame was not invented but evolved through shared knowledge and the collective simplification of traditional half-timber construction. The system characterized by two-story vertical studs democratized through simple techniques, nailed assembly, is strengthened and stabilized through structural redundancy. Vertical, horizontal and diagonal bracing members placed close together in a filigree box frame streamline supply chains from forestry to mill to suppliers, builders and consumers. The system’s no-frills D-I-Y quality became an integral part of Americana, used to build pattern buildings, cottages, cabins, A-frames, and provided the basis for the most successful application of low-cost manufactured housing principles: the mobile home. 

 

Today’s version of the balloon frame, known now as the platform frame is still one of the most economical and generalized building structural archetypes. Included in panelized structures or modular volumetric structures, the mass production of cheap, standardized, well recognized and available building components is a central principle of lowering costs. The design flexibility from the same simple parts also displayed light-framing as a model the world over for low-cost and low-tech building.

left: Balloon Frame; right: mobile home framing

Prefabrication experiments - 439 - Catalogues and styles

 

A spinoff of the spawning 20^th century automobile industry, early mobile home manufacturing deployed mass production principles to build affordable dwellings. These principles are well documented; building a lightweight timber structure over a steel platform, wheeled out of the factory, delivered and installed on any site. The pre-cut kit house also used mass produced timber frames but from a different value proposition in as much as its design process offered increased options; pieces could be shaped and packaged for multiple configurations less affected by transport criteria. 

 

Both models of twentieth century prefabrication used plan books to organize procurement. Clients could choose from designs articulated to harmonized modular strategies and supply chains. The Sears catalogue of houses is probably the most famous and inspired other companies like Canadian icon Eaton to offer their own version. The number of designs was staggering when analyzed in relation to what architects often decry as standardized prefab. 

 

The conceptual distance between how industry and architects interpret the catalogue endures as an interesting dilemma for manufacturers. While architects have often argued against style to inform patterns and pastiche architectural compositions, their proposals remain relatively similar in terms of fundamentals differing only in aesthetic orientations. Resolution 4 architecture's took on the modular catalogue «The Modern Modular» with what at first glance seems like a third option: A library of spatial components and modular variability anchored to an objective of spatial and production rationalization. However, the aesthetic remains manifestly modern defined by clean and minimal lines. 

 

Is architectural variability truly about singularity or is it about style. The Eaton catalogue contained traditional designs outlined by similar detailing and volumes, while Res4’s architectural approach more closely mimics a type of pattern language leading to houses that all look the same, hardly singular. Industry’s take on the precut house was in a sense at once rational and varied. Contemporary architects argue that prefab should be organized around similar components, nonetheless, mostly tainted by modernist attitudes. This aesthetic and disciplinary-informed gap between architectural sophistication and generally palatable designs continues to hinder prefab’s streamlined application.

left: Eaton Catalogue; right: Resolution 4 Architecture modularity

Prefabrication experiments - 438 - Concrete Tube Utopias

 

The previous blog posts have discussed housing types from micro-dwellings to industrialized utopias and large-scale urban renewal proposals. Each motivated to efficiently supply quality dwellings for the masses affordably and with sufficient flexibility to respond to varying dispositions. Current generalized urbanization challenges existing models toward the production of dwellings while simultaneously reducing our collective environmental footprint.  Conventional housing construction is a slow go, fraught with planning delays, bogged permitting and symbolized by lagging productivity. 

 

Repurposing ready-made industrialized objects for housing urgencies is a recurring theme and has spawned an assortment of schemes including converted shipping containers or stacked mobile homes. While designed in different eras, two proposals demonstrate the cyclical nature of architects inspired by redirecting manufactured products for other uses. Guy Dessauges (Living Tubes, 1966; blog article 28) and James Law architecture have both represented concrete infrastructure pipe sections as modular building blocks for quickly putting flats together. Dessauge’s tubes were envisioned around a centralized service core or stacked three stories high composing a housing hive. The Opod Tube House (2017) proposal visualized in multiple contexts clearly borrows, consciously or subconsciously, from the same Zeitgeist.  

 

Can lessons be learned from these radical investigations for creating affordable housing or are they just exercises architects have come to adopt as their discipline’s way of addressing crises? The amount of rework needed to adapt products to housing is often absent from designs and sometimes asserts disciplinary caprice. The discipline’s «modern» heritage of rewiring industrial designs to imagine novel building systems reforming classic ways of building is entrenched in this type of poetic license that has often led to socially, economically and culturally untenable proposals. 

 

Most architects are far removed from economics, manufacturing and streamlined production that the only way they feel that they can contribute to solutions is by resorting to romantic views of prefabrication as the simple assembly of premade forms. The truth is that adapting ready-mades can be complex: mechanical systems, interior infill, site infrastructure and other retrofit requirements makes this type of stacking less than credible and financially unfeasible.

above: Opod; below: Living Tubes

Prefabrication experiments - 437 - XL(towers) - Vertical neighborhoods

 

Relating the advantages of the single-family dwelling (privacy, spatial distribution on multiple floors, four orientations for views and exterior spaces) with the benefits of collective housing (density, shared services, proximity) has inspired architects since industrialization created an magnifying need for affordable urban housing prototypes. The last few blog posts have referenced Le Corbusier's Unité d'habitation based on amassing rationalized two-floor flats, Metabolists’ plugins aggregated over shared towers along with an idealized view of a multi-floor infrastructure to accommodate homes represented in Site Architect’s Highrise of Homes (1981).

 

The flagship endeavor for this productive vision of high-rise suburban living is Habitat 67 constructed for the Man and his World exhibit in Montréal, Canada (1967). The modular prestressed and post-tensioned concrete mega-blocks were cast and amassed to create an architectural statement about the potential future of housing that never manifested. Still this architectural dream endures in its most at once naive and foreword looking manifestoes. 

 

Chicago studio Kwong Von Glinow  projected a tower of multi-story houses for Hong Kong. The design won first prize for the Hong Kong Pixel Homes competition in 2018. The modular boxes would be stacked up to four high to organize single houses and apartments vertically instead of the horizontal relationships conveyed in conventional planning. Juxtaposed single, couple and family units are intended as a type of vertical unit – a neighborhood - activating dynamic collective spaces between units. The interiors could be fit-out according to inhabitants’ needs and eventually evolve over time. While the theoretical proposal is rendered to showcase a mass to void relationship that allows for vertical patios, views and rich interior/exterior relationships, the real-life viability remains to be proven. Designed in groups of four stories, the proposal echoes the need for a type of primary support structure to carry each stacked neighborhood, which would allow for streamlined replication of modular units. As developed in a timber tall building in Norway, Treet, the four-story stack built on a infrastructure floor is a credible option for realizing this contemporary take on the vertical distribution of individualized dwellings.

left: Pixel competition design ; right: Treet section showing two «support» floors