Whether stacked, juxtaposed or
grouped, combining continuously produced room sized building elements
epitomizes the concept of factory produced buildings and architecture. Using
factory produced box framed units rationalizes the connections between design,
production, assembly and construction. The origins of box-type industrialized
building systems seem to stem from early pioneer caravaners or the train car
container frame. Further inspired by a mass-production legacy, many volumetric
systems have been described as solutions to housing crises in many different
contexts both by industry and architects.
The sectional unit or container
bridges the fields of production and design using a simple conceptual framework
articulated to a rigorous set of dimensional, structural and compositional
standards. Akin to toy blocks or simple brick construction, the clearly defined
modular units and their arrangement can achieve countless combinations. These
types of containers or volumetric structures include transformable industrial
shipping containers, manufactured rooms or service sub-assemblies and the
iconic singlewide houses.
Bertrand Goldberg's Unishelter Town
and more recently Sean Godsell's Emergency Sea Container reuse for emergency
shelters both exemplify designers’ fascination with the standard rectangular
prism and its compositional agility, however the transport and shipping
challenges appear to out way the advantages as the modular building block is
still a fairly peripheral strategy. Many companies or industrialists have tried
to optimize transport by proposing flatpacked boxes.
Baühu modular buildings form the U.K.
is one such company that produces standard shipping sized volumes of 2.4 x 6 x 2.5
meters, that are shipped as a flat surface package and unfolded on site. Each
container can be stacked to a maximum of three stories. The telescopic flatpack
is expanded to a simple box frame configuration with steel framed edges
revealing the flat packed facing panels, which are then simply tilted into
place. The company offers standard plans and modular configurations for
schools, housing, worker camps, and commercial applications. The prism’s
envelope materials can also vary from the standard metal container to fully
customizable imagery for each face. The steel structure frame is infilled with
insulated sandwich panels. The flat pack strategy allows for easy assembly as
well as its total disassembly for relocation and its long-term adaptability.
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| Images from the company brochure |
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