Prefabrication experiments - 106 - Shigeru Ban's seven-story manifesto

Readily debarked, cut, divided, carved, sanded, planed, or traditionally hand-hewn with a broad axe, the diversity with which timber can or has been fashioned elevated wood’s artisans to legendary status. As was the case with the master mason, the master carpenter, or the great artisan «daiku» in Japanese building culture, was responsible for both designing and building. Elucidating the tectonics of weaving, interlocking joints, artistry and precision, Japanese temples, Scandinavian log stacking, and European box frame exemplify the master carpenters’ talents in frame as well as mass timber building.

The meticulous crafting of connections associated with traditional timber building was somewhat lost to the invention of steel fasteners. Joinery and its master craftsmen became too expensive to compete with the commodification of wood building. The balloon frame developed into the icon of this commodification. The politics of war and industrialization further strained wood’s use as concrete and steel, icons of development, monopolized civic architecture's requirement for flexibility, height and large spans.

The improvement of wood composite hybrids such as glue laminated or cross- laminated timber products combined with the democratization of numerically controlled cutting and fabrication renew complex joinery as a viable strategy in rationalized building methods. The advancements in wood dividing and bonding have increased wood’s effectiveness on par with both steel and concrete. Modern techniques produce a large range of shapes and profiles for both vertical and horizontal spans and for every building type with comparatively low embodied energy.

Shigeru Ban, a Japanese born architect, well known for his work that explores the links between traditional and contemporary building culture, designed a frame structure that exemplifies the tall wood paradigm while highlighting numerically cut joinery as the structure’s main architectural feature. The seven-story post and beam structure was designed and built for the Tamedia publishing company in Zurich. The exceptional glue-laminated posts and beams are digitally milled with great precision. Vulgar nails and bolts are replaced with dowel pins made of beech plywood, which tie the structural components together. A veritable mega-structure-puzzle of precisely engineered parts, the framework didactically reflects the architect's fascination with woodcraft while the glue-laminated timber demonstrates an intelligent and intelligible use of a sustainable and renewable resource.

Joinery photograph and drawings view from the architect's website

Prefabrication experiments - 105 - Vertebrae vertical bathroom (Patent GB2376183)

Harnessing, tempering and distributing water, heat and power in a building generate their share of design, technical and coordination disputes. Within the spectrum of building’s conveniences, devices and their interactions, the generative relationship between human hygiene and planning has been highlighted by even the most ancient civilizations. Water gives a building its potential to service and underscores architecture’s hospitability. Industrialization domesticated this serviceability through the modern bathroom and standardized its components. This regularity offered design possibilities for arranging a building’s service distribution.

Service cores or utility cores in all shapes and sizes were generated from component standardization. The strategy offered a systemic design and construction process producing self-contained engine-like nuclei, potentially reducing system entanglement. The core was to building what the engine was to the automobile. 

Along with simplifying services, the relationship between the core and its served spaces can engender greater flexibility as the adjacent spaces can be freed from mechanical constraints. This adaptability in planning was taken one step further by the Vertebrae bathroom’s inventor. The bathroom pillar/column is based on the idea of a hygiene hub. The inventor’s main argument is that in a common bath each fixture is only deployed for minutes at a time while permanently taking up space. The inventor proposed a core unit that stacks each fixture enabling its use as required and minimizing overall spatial footprint.

The Vertebrae vertical bathroom commercialized by Design Odysee Ltd was developed based on the patents requested by designer Paul Anthony Hernon. The 150 kg vertical device articulates each common bath fixture including sink, toilet, shower and some storage spaces onto a vertical service conduit. Geared to small spaces, the transformable unit serves as a spatial focal point from which adjacent spaces react. Analogous to a foldable Murphy bed, a reduction of overall spatial requirements could be attained, as the space is multifunctional.

Concentrating services into a simple operable unit, it performs as active built-in furniture relating to the different heights and scales of the human body. All components rotate a full 360 degrees except for the shower elements, which align at 180 degrees. Somewhere between a standard service core and an operable plumbing wall, the vertebrae displays the longstanding principle of containing all services in a contained commodity-like core, which continues to defy and appeal to designers. 

Patent drawing from patent GB2378183