Prefabrication experiments - 148 - Future Visions - 09 - Flat Pack Disaster Dwelling from a Waste Based Bio-composite

Rapidly increasing world populations, conflicts, changing urban and regional demographic patterns and natural disasters amplify the need for adequate housing. Increasing pressure on finite resources argue for inventive building products, materials and methods durable and sustainable enough not to increasingly pressure already fragile ecosystems. Consumerism associated with new construction is still a major factor in the generation of waste. Industrialized building systems have the potential to cut waste and generate a more responsible building culture. Complementing intelligent building systems with materials that use waste or by-products in their fabrication process further reduces raw material harvesting. 

Exploration in low-embodied energy materials is not new. First patented in the late 1920s, Papercrete suggested a recycled paper fibre mixed with cement, clay and water to produce a mouldable mixture for casting walls or blocks. This type of engineered building product is the basis for a flat pack emergency dwelling proposed by the American USDA’s (United States Department of Agriculture) Forests Product Laboratory. The fibreboard is a type of stressed-skin wall panel that can be composed of wood fibres, recycled paper or agricultural waste. The bio-composite is the central component of a simple, deployable and compact building system assembled with extruded aluminum clips; the easily assembled kit is not only easy to assemble or disassemble but also fully biodegradable. The aluminum fasteners are simple friction clip connectors, which would undoubtedly require some type of pin connection to increase solidity and durability especially in extreme conditions.

The sheet material is made to compete with any other sheathing product and with a high strength to weight ratio.   Insulated or non insulated the stressed skin structure could be strong enough to eliminate wall framing reducing the building system to two intelligible parts (panels and clips). Akin to flat packed furniture, the lightweight system could be waterproofed and sealed, delivered to any building site and adapted to any foundation. The aluminum clips also add little weight to the overall building system. The flat pack is not a new concept in building culture. The stacks of panels reduce the transport energy associated with shipping volumetric construction building systems.

Image of flat pack dwelling from USDA report -
see https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/publications/specific_pub.php?posting_id=17089&header_id=p

Prefabrication experiments - 147 - Future visions - 08 - Megastructures

As contemporary information technology percolates building culture, the potential to industrialize entirely personalized and personalizable building systems expands. Software and hardware platforms allow users to interact more directly and define their environments.  Building information modeling, large scale 3d printing and all manner of numerically controlled cutting devices are reforming the way buildings are designed and built. This greater personalisation potential consequently repositions an argument in favour of generic collective infrastructures capable of sustaining individualization particularly in terms of the collective housing block.

Framed as “supports and infill” John Habraken’s theories are increasingly relevant as customizable kits could be designed and manufactured to be simply fitted into a common substructure. The mega-structure plug and play capsule architectural discourse and aesthetic synonymous with the second half of the twentieth century proposed a utopia of fully modular, transformable and adaptable dwellings. As migration patterns and expanding populations increase the need for adequate, affordable, flexible and dense housing solutions, the mega-structure has reintegrated architectural exploration.

A speculative proposal by Edge Design -  Gifu Kitagata housing interprets the generic structure’s potential. It proposes networks and infill patterns based on vertical communities, each with their own light building system. This type of vertical spatial organization and development explores the mega-structure as an active component supporting individualized dwellings and community development. Envisioning a future where mega-structures offer more than a support structure, “the pod vending machine” designed as a competition pitch by Haseef Rafiei proposes a veritable construction machine: A vertical skeletal frame integrating a capacity for generating individual dwellings. The conceptual project proposes a unique user experience in terms of dwelling procurement. Combining the contemporary microdwelling with a superstructure modular frame that acts as a giant 3d printer and crane, the machine deposits and positions dwellings as required. Further, dwellings can be repositioned over time and offer potential to be adapted for different needs. Historical precedents such as the Nagakin Capsule Tower (1972) by Kisho Kurukawa imagined similar futurist systems where dwellings are interchangeable consumables. Here in a similar proposal users not only can choose their pod but also have it the way they want it as the just in time production crane delivers a user-defined dwelling. 

Capsule Tower - Gifu Kitagata Housing - Pod Vending Machine