Prefabrication experiments -96- Utility walls and pods at the Miami Valley Hospital

Modular, manufactured and mobile building strategies have been directed toward every building type from schools to post offices and most emblematically housing. Industry and architecture form a tenuous bond through the ideal of factory produced quantity and quality. Stacking pre-finished boxes as one would a child's toy block set became representative of production linked with architectural expression and was embodied by projects such as Habitat 67 (1967, Montréal) or Paul Rudolf’s colonnade condominiums (1980, Singapore). The modules suggested an infinite adaptability through plug and play form and contributed to theorizing the infrastructure to infill relationship that founded «open building» synonymous with late 20th century industrialized building systems.

The collective infrastructure and personalized infill can be traced back to standardized utilities: The Fuller bathroom, the SECIP Hygiene wall and the Mobilcore all predicted the combination of off-site quality with on-site flexibility. This infrastructure to core relationship spawned many experiments in which modular components were leveraged toward overall agility. However, module stacking or utility cores have often resulted in failure to address basic spatial requirements as standardized manufacturing dimensions often dictate architectural form.

The synergetic relationship between manufacturing potential and architectural diversity was the focal point of a successful and customized application of a utility walls and pods strategy in the Miami Valley Hospital addition built in Dayton, Ohio, USA. The twelve -storey, forty six thousand five hundred square meter extension employed contemporary conceptualization, modelling and fabrication methods to achieve a supple and adaptable building system while attaining economical viability. Each room is organised around a prefabricated demising wall equipped as a technical hub and is linked to a volumetric bathroom pod. The architects from NBBJ consultants along with builder Skanska were both exploring prefab in order to increase quality and productivity.

The architects designed the utility walls and cores to relate to contextual requirements instead of employing existing module dimensions. Building information modeling and mock-ups were central to developing totally customized prefabricated pieces. The factory-produced modules are more than volumetric components. Each utility wall and bathroom pod is a physical representation of information imbedded design, which will adapt to varying needs of quickly evolving hospital technology. The «building blocks» are designed and manufactured according to no pre-set standards and are intended to be easily replaceable. 

Utility wall and pod representation