Prefabrication experiments - 468 - Flexibility of on and offsite reinforced concrete

Whether cast on or offsite, reinforced concrete construction was generalized for collective housing in a relatively short period between the end of the 19th and the middle of the 20th century. Prized for its rapidity, strength, flexibility and fireproofing, the malleable material also sustained the invention of new industrialized building systems and their architectural potentials. Slabs and columns could take rationalized form-resistant shapes and heights difficult to achieve in conventional timber or masonry construction. Further, the open plans based on a rigorous grid of distanced posts or columns generated horizontal arrangement fields free from the structural constraints of customary bearing walls. Massive postwar rebuilds throughout Europe contributed to understanding the possibilities for these systems to be mass-produced and modulated for any context. 

 

In Italy during the late 1960s and early 1970s many collective housing blocks were erected by fostering the advantages of reinforced concrete with precast elements. Italian architect / designer, Angelo Mangiarotti planned a series of collective dwelling blocks which showcase the shared knowledge maturing in multiple countries. Born on February 16, 1921 in Milan, Mangiarotti graduated in architecture from the Milan Polytechnic in 1948. He met modern masters Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Konrad Wachsmann as a visiting professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in the early 1950s, where prefabrication was extensively seen as the future of architecture and construction. 

 

After returning to Italy, Mangiarotti founded a studio, and investigated a building system that combined onsite cast concrete flat slabs with a modular precast curtain wall system hung from the perimeter of the concrete floors. Based on a strict modular grid, factory-made opaque or transparent vertical panels would simply slide and suspend from a horizontal modular lintel block anchored to the main structural slabs. A compositional interplay of vertical panels and windows varied the arrangement according to any customizable layout within the adaptable open plan. This hybrid onsite and offsite system was stacked to 8 stories at Monza from 1968-1975 and 5 stories in Arosio contributing to the rebuilding of Italy and defining the country as a locus for the study of flexible open prefabrication.

Edge detail of the suspended curtain wall

Prefabrication experiments - 467 - On and off-site Supply Chain Overlaps

Supply chains in building construction involve multiple project stakeholders, trades, and contractors charged with completing a building. Offsite construction implies harmonizing two diverse supply chains that overlap through final assembly. An electrical contractor hired for wiring and finishing a building chunk in the factory is often organized differently from the contractor that is then mandated to complete connections and coordinate the work on site. 

 

Trade duplication and imbrication can increase costs associated with sitework even if factory production is optimized. This is just one example of the complexities associated with harmonizing onsite construction culture with factory manufacturing. Professionals, suppliers, general contractors, inspection firms, specialized trades are contracted on a project-by-project basis, at worst chosen according to a lowest bid system or at best employed from project to project to harness some iterative traction. Moving from this type of fragmented ethos to an integrated manufacturing process argues for replication and product standardization: Deploying similar products, people, coordination and spreading costs over multiple projects.

 

Successfully reaching time and cost savings is contingent to bulk purchase orders for everything from surface materials like ceramics or drywall to plumbing pipes, sinks and fixtures. A scalable supply chain tuned to an ascertained output is the basis of industrialized production and should inform onsite construction management. Normalized grids, patterns, designs and details can facilitate and maintain a symbiotic relationship codifying assemblies and tasks.  

 

Occasionally compared to automobile manufacturing, furniture production or even shipbuilding, building is distinct from these products in its durable (50-100 years) anchoring to a particular site. This implies at the very least differentiated connections to infrastructure, foundations and structural specificity determined by locus criteria; constraints that impede complete reproduction as is the case of other commodities. Fine-tuning these two fields of production with their underlying supply chains remains one of the greatest challenges to prefabrication’s uptake; Contemporary design tools and digital twins are facilitating information exchange an important element for increased collaboration and potentially streamlining supply chain decisions. 

Clyde, Shu and alt. (2024) Offsite Construction Supply Chain Challenges: An Integrated Overview. 

In Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Volume 150, Issue 7

Prefabrication experiments - 466 - Transport challenges

 

Archigram’s flying house, blending a mobile home with a high-capacity military grade helicopter, and Paul Rudolf’s classification of the mobile home as American vernacular define the complex relationship between the industrialized production of homes and architecture’s evolving perception of the low-cost factory built dwelling archetype. Architects have generally understood and promoted the arguments for manufacturing architecture in a streamlined, quality-controlled setting, delivering a 99% complete fabricated house to a client, however, transportation constraints and normalized outputs have been criticized for their inflexibility.

 

Modular volumetric construction seeks to reform this long-lasting friction by stacking premade customizable boxes, using the manufacturing lessons learned from the mobile home to make large-scale unique buildings. 

 

Whether mobile, manufactured or modular, the same underlying constraints that led to the 12’-wide homes and progressed into 14-foot and even 16-foot-wide modular boxes requiring special permits and chaperons, transport is the number one design criteria limiting modular volumetric’s formal diversification. Large scale chunk delivery limits spans, codifies metrics, and requires structural redundancy to make the large volumes robust enough to withstand rolling and bumping over long distances. 

 

Once delivered to their final destinations, the factory-finished boxes also imply large staging areas and cranes to set them in place to be stitched and weatherproofed. Long distances can also be prohibitive, remote locations, or even dense urban environments, all requiring increased logistics and special permitting for temporarily blocking traffic in tightly packed urban settings. Volume height is equally limited by overpass clearances making anything over 8-foot interior tricky without using low-bed vehicles. Notwithstanding these procedural challenges, the factory-finished large boxes sometimes up to 60’ long make quick work of any residential building as 12 x 60-foot modules can be carried on flatbed trucks requiring no special permits.

 

Transportability has long been highlighted as a central narrative in prefab architecture representing the freedom afforded by the moveable house able to adapt to any context, brought to site by road, sea or air supplying buildings as commodities ready to be used without the headaches of conventional construction.

top left: House 19 (Korteknie Stuhlmacher) ; top center: Sikorsky Sky Crane delivering a home ; right: UFO house carried to its site ; bottom left: The Flying House ; bottom center - modular buildings on a barge

 

Prefabrication experiments - 465 - Factory building and Buildings

Currently, making building chunks in a factory deploys all manner of numerically controlled cutters, routers, cranes, panel bridge nailers, butterfly tables, and conveyors to increase offsite construction's capacities and value. Uptake in all sectors of construction’s industrialization is being stimulated and directed by these digital tools and techniques along with their underlying data. The principles of factory production applied to architecture can reduce waste at all levels of the building process functioning in a climate and quality-controlled environment. The invisible hand supporting factory production is standardization. Replicable elements and processes increase scalable efficiencies. Cutting, organizing, assembling, and packing in a covered space stresses how Fordisms and Toyota-isms (lean construction) can be arranged for producing edifices. 

 

While the tools have been updated with the objective of increasing productivity, the primary elements of a factory remain the same.  The Ford Motor Company factories as designed by Albert Kahn at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries promoted an open system, with spanning elements supported by small and vastly spaced vertical bearing elements. Reinforced concrete, steel and timber examples all traced a similar path; the roof or covering plays a fundamental role in orchestrating a malleable choreography of materials, machines and people to achieve a streamlined process from receiving components to the delivery of value-added assemblies. Logistics are comprehensively protected from climate and other contextual difficulties imposed by conventional job sites. 

 

The factory can be permanent or temporary (flying factories) structured by the posture of protection and an ideal of adaptability. While the interior arrangement of equipment can change, the building system itself is a generic support structure where a robust slab supports floor equipment and robust beams or girts suspend tools, creating ideal horizontal planes delineating a secure manufacturing environment. The architecture produced in these environments is normalized and of greater quality than projects built onsite as systems, details, assemblies are perfected gaining knowledge from product to projects. Cleanliness, organization, process geared spaces of production are an important part of construction culture, whether prefabricated or site built; iconic temples of mass production hangars protect and generate efficiencies for better buildings.

Ford Motor Company Long Beach Assembly Plant, Assembly Building, 700 Henry Ford Avenue, 

Long Beach, Los Angeles County, CA

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

 

Prefabrication experiments - 464 - Catalogues and pattern buildings

 

As housing demand increases and supply festers because of aggravating construction challenges, policy makers are surveying offsite construction as a quick fix to a systemic problem. Housing provision is not only related to productivity but should also address changing lifestyles, demographic fluctuations, and affordability which require comprehensive governance beyond design and production. The catalogue of housing types and the pre-approved pattern building have been proposed as potential avenues for boosting supply. 

 

The catalogue was explored by Canadian housing authority (CMHC) in the 50s and 60s and led to the construction of many homes responding to the post war baby-boom. Architects were given an opportunity to contribute archetypes for the nuclear family in a suburban setting. Articulated to house similarities private industry developed high levels of standardized designs and construction strategies. While not prefabricated, the catalogue certainly pushed low value-added industrialized components in every suburban tract; the timber platform frame was abundantly used. 

 

Similar normalization and socialist policies in post-war Europe deployed reinforced concrete precast panels as the system of choice for replicable collective blocks. The «pattern» large panel edifice was an exercise in standardization akin to the single-family dwelling but with the added value of serializing a kit-of-panel elements to be used en-masse. Both systems, lightweight timber and reinforced concrete, were made affordable by their large-scale use. The catalogue and the typical block directed straightforward solutions to housing supply - repeatable designs that could be patterned and predetermined to harmonize supply chains economically federating all required materials and methods. 

 

Critiqued over and over, today this regularity, while not a comprehensive solution to the current housing crisis is being promoted once again arguing that housing provision is slowed by design and approvals; remove architects from the planning process, simplify permitting, its associated delays, offer model buildings, and housing will go up quicker. This type of short-sighted planning is partially what killed prefab’s potentials through enduring prejudices.  Supporting creative initiatives toward innovative and affordable solutions for contemporary needs, may take more time to develop, but the current crisis requires a holistic approach to avoid offsite bearing blamed once again for systemic challenges. 

Left: CMHC catalogue design by R.T. Affleck ; Right: Pattern large panel blocks for a new town (USSR)

Prefabrication experiments - 463 - Lessons from the mobile home sector

Critiques of the mobile home industry range from suspect construct quality to cookie cutter inferior design and to trailer parks denoting less than ideal living conditions. While these assessments have been debated, the production of these untethered shelters on an assembly line can certainly relate expertise about dwelling affordability. 

 

The self-built inhabitable trailer and the manufactured house, a progression of the mobile home, share the chronicles of building a whole or half of a house on a mobile steel chassis. The chassis, a movable foundation platform onto which the home's structure is attached, also facilitates rolling the structure in the factory from one production station to another. The mobile home differs from modular volumetric building chunks which are usually produced without the steel wheeled base, installed on a permanent foundation, carried on a truck and stacked multiple stories high. Both share the benefits of completing most building tasks in a climate-controlled setting.

 

For a typical onsite built house, labour can represent up to 50% of total costs; factory workers' reduced wages, automated manufacturing, assorted aids such as hoists, jigs, automated machinery and gantry cranes can reduce labour costs by as much as 30%. The repeating patterns of mobile homes also make it possible to make bulk purchases for everything from wall board to kitchen cabinetry and plumbing fixtures. With all these cost rationalizing measures, the mobile home industry still represents a successful segment of home production accounting for roughly 9% of all homes built in the US. 

 

One of the important lessons of the inhabitable trailer is the in-factory optimization integrating experience from home to home reducing task times and waste at every step of the process. When compared to onsite construction, quality control in the factory and inspecting recurring designs and organizations is simpler - fostering clear procedural practises. Founded on the strengths of mass production, most companies offer predetermined designs with some options for customization, however product seriality whether based on linear or cellular manufacturing lines is the formidable lesson that can be learned from mobile homes. 

Star Mobile Homes advertisement

Prefabrication experiments - 462 - Panelization principles

 

Panelization, assembling buildings with wall or floor factory produced panels, has succeeded more than other industrialized building strategies in becoming commonplace and widely used in construction projects. Framing on site is time consuming and generates large amounts of waste. Fabricating wall, floor or roof surface sub-assemblies in factories is an efficient way of erecting a building's structure without the more complex wrapping, transport, lifting and setting required in modular construction. Further, lightweight panel systems come with design freedom as their dimensions and parameters are less constrained by delivery prerequisites.  The advantages of panelization also include their low impact on conventional construction culture; Specifically for open panels used for framing, their implications for systemic coordination are minimal.

 

Timber panels are straightforward construction elements organized as stressed skins, composites, or even as hollow box-beam formats. While they range in configuration, the building method remains a standard lightweight timber platform construction. Beyond their onsite flexibility, their manufacturability and relatively simple tooling has made panels effective: A framing table with an insulation or sheathing table in a shed, organized in a linear sequence where elements can be cut, framed and then finished at arms' length is a prevailing factory arrangement. As compared to modular volumetric which offers its own advantages in terms of offsite systemic integration, panel-making reduces the number of trades, systems, components and logistics required in a factory. 

 

The single line setup with framing and sheathing tables is an affordable path for panel production:  The drawing accompanying this post shows a cut-off saw that prepares timber stock according to design documents. The cut timber elements are then carried to framing tables with conveyors reducing human effort required to carry materials. Using non-automated tools reduces important upfront costs but limits factory output. Weinmann is a well-known manufacturer of panel-fabricating equipment that has developed completely automated lines for increasing output. With this type of relatively affordable democratization of computer-controlled tools, tables equipped with panel bridges to place, cut, nail, lift and perform any number of programmed tasks are becoming common.  

Weinmann framing table and bridge + Simple linear panelization process

Prefabrication experiments - 461 - Miracle Truss

Designing coverings, bridges or other large spanning structures is central to both structural engineering and architectural conceptions. Industrialization and its application in building construction drove the development of many material and compositional innovations. Trusses in steel, concrete and even in timber highlighted the relation between spans and material distribution defining efficient geometries by precisely placing material to resist loads within its effective strain limits. Beam effect underscores these assemblies by modern engineers who fashioned trusses in every scope and scale to respond to the new architectural demands of the machine age; train stations, airports, ports, bridges, all implied optimally spanning space utilizing minimal material with maximum structural performance.

 

Combining the efficiency of trusses with the form resistance of compressive structures, like vaults, A-frames or Butler frames, the Miracle Truss Buildings company supplies a kit-of-parts truss for cruck-framing small buildings. The basic unit, a modern archetype, a Butler type portico frame is assembled from four onsite bolted components delivered separately to maximize transport capacities. The frames are adaptable to industrial as well as residential requirements. Leveraging the success of large metal buildings, pre-engineered-to-order according to site and contextual criteria, the Miracle Truss building can be designed using an on-line configurator aligned with its fabrication and supply chain logistics.

 

Bolted to standard strip foundations, the linear arrangement’s length is boundless with both gable ends free of any structural constraints. Each composing part, vertical elements and oblique rafters, is profiled according to lines of stress. A rigid frame in cross section, simple tension braces stabilize the frames laterally. Steel angles fixed to the trusses make it a simple task to add timber purlins to construct discrete envelope systems. This complete separation of structure and skin also leads to the structure’s potential disassembly and reassembly multiplying potential service lives optimizing resource use and reducing total carbon footprint of the steel's initial production. A multifunctional framing platform, the Miracle Truss reinterprets the modern ideal of truss effect and providing off the shelf building kits readily available for any context.

Miracle Truss building during construction

 

 

Prefabrication experiments - 460 - Notes in passing - 05 - Platforms for Life Timber Kit-of-Parts

 

The affordable housing crisis affecting many is pressing stakeholders to assess the lagging productivity of conventional construction. For building new dwellings or for retrofitting aging 20th century building stocks, traditional trades and procedures lack the required swiftness, optimized resource management and takt times that the present state of housing development economics requires.  Planning, permitting, financing, approvals and contracting are all time-consuming stages that can be facilitated by kit or platform approaches. Using predetermined processes, components and parts outlined to streamline procurement increases production capacity aligned with offsite construction potentials.

 

The Platforms for Life design system initiated by the Intelligent City project https://intelligent-city.com/urban-housing-product/ proposes a comprehensive building system that uses mass timber components in rationalized, standardized, modular and flexible configurations adapted and modelled for any site. Articulated to optimized spans in relation to flat dimensions, the online metrics configurator expedites preliminary feasibility studies that encompass all project criteria; ready-to-go from the initial planning meetings. The manufacturable parts facilitate everything from gaining city approvals to architectural detailing as projects repeat identical chunks, stitching and joinery. Each site-specific project is distilled as a digital twin integrating the design, fabrication, assembly and construction processes through BIM software.

 

Iterative studies are adjusted and tweaked in real time without losing their integrated manufacturability as grid-based aggregations all deploy the system's underlying DNA. Once confirmed, the parametric models include capacities for detailed design or even analysis. A prime example of digital based integration of the design and construction processes, each building is devised with the same parts, then sequenced and delivered to the construction site to facilitate assembly. The nimble industrialized building system includes criteria for reducing energy consumption, span optimization and topological diversity. This type of union between design, fabrication, assembly and adaptable just-in-time delivery exemplifies how DFMA and offsite construction are leveraged to respond to high demand by organizing a supply chain of stakeholders, professionals and products through centralized design devices harmonizing normalized hardware and software components.

Platforms for Life artist rendering

Prefabrication experiments - 459 - Notes in passing - 04 - LEGO® blocks as an example of platform theory

 

Platform theory and its relevance for building construction has been suggested as potentially harmonizing design variables with fabrication, construction and furthermore to facilitate a circular approach in construction as pieces used for multiple buildings would be designed as modular and interoperable. Hardware commonalities exist in construction as steel buildings, prefab concrete components, and a myriad of other assemblies are normalized to be used across diverse organizations using repeating parameters within singular designs. Using platforms for building construction is often compared to the automobile industry: cooperating manufacturers share dimensional and material components of their products’ underbellies. An equally interesting analogy to platform theory directed to making is LEGO® plastic toy brick variability; standardized toy blocks are dimensionally compatible, can be clicked and composed into an infinite number of designs.

 

Since the late 1970s and the LEGO®  patent’s expiry, the same type of toy brick expanded commercially where other companies, Mould King, Sembo, Cobi produce compatible products. The toy bricks have expanded to include software platforms developed to create and virtually construct a LEGO®  model, visualize its completion, categorize its required components and potentially even create a purchase order or a bill of materials that is coordinated with producers – an idealize vision of applying DfMA in architecture. 

 

LEGO® Digital Designer, Mecabricks, and BrickLink studio are three configurators that offer users similar capacities to test their designs and share them with an online community of plastic brick architecture designers. Linked to online sharing sites, these configurators, a type of LEGO®  Information Modeling, communicate modular coordination principles, automate take-offs, facilitate cloud sharing and distribution. On-line communities also use these platforms to buy and sell, new, repurposed, or vintage pieces that multiply design potentials. 

 

This approach to crowd sharing and interoperability could be directed toward building design and fabrication. A configurator for personalized designs from a catalogue of interchangeable pieces based on bulk purchasing, automated estimating, working drawing packages and shop drawings frame a formidable strategy from which users create buildings of any scope and scale from a regulated and categorized number of predetermined subassemblies.

LEGO® blocks