Prefabrication experiments - 200 - master industrialists - 01 - Pier Luigi Nervi

Prefabrication is not a new idea in architecture. Rudofsky’s book Architecture Without Architects (1964) pointed out many examples of modular and standardized building systems predating modernity.  Master carpenters or master masons were responsible for a heuristic sharing of expertise, fusing material knowledge with technical competence and all prepared components ahead of construction. 

Industrialization transformed building culture and enabled a new type of master, linking traditional building knowledge with the ideal that industry could offer quality to the masses. Pier Luigi Nervi, engineer/ architect/ artist/ industrialist/ master builder exemplified the idea of a master industrialist with the ability to utilize historic building strategies such as domes or vaults with the understanding of new materials and methods. Educated at the university of Bologna as a civil engineer (1913), he began a proficient career with the Bologna society for cement works and later founded a construction company with engineer Roberto Nebbiosi (1923). Nervi operated the factory and the building yard as a setting for investigating and inventing, materials, methods and structural schemes. 

Four wartime experiments recount Nervi’s theories on industrialized building: The prefabricated house (1946) proposed 6 precast elements to structure a circular dwelling kit. Each wall or roof piece was geometrically coordinated so as to compose a perfected circular structural and spatial organisation. His patented hangars of precast components (1939-1941) explored a barrel vault construction system: the repetitive use of lightweight concrete arched elements shaped large spanning vaults braced laterally by precast purlins. This truss concept was further developed in his later lamella vaulted structures where each crossing intersection was reinforced by joining and welding the steel reinforcement and sealed with mortar. Lesser known but equally fundamental in shaping the idea of a master industrialist, the reinforced 400 ton concrete ship was designed almost like an inverted arch kit; precast reinforced concrete trusses formed the ribs of the naval structure while cast in place purlin beams provided the spine. The fourth project, a storage house in Rome (1945), was built from 30 mm thick corrugated “ferrocemento” panels for walls and roofs. The thin and lightweight panels produced by layering mortar and reinforcing mesh became synonymous with Nervi’s ribbed constructions and epitomised the capacity to fuse material knowledge, repetitive geometric tessellations and modern engineering with large-scale production. 

Four experiments in precast concrete - scanned from Rogers E. 1957.  The Works of Pier Luigi Nervi. Praeger. New York
clockwise: prefabricated house components, airplane hangar details, 400 ton ship section, ferrocement storage house.

  

Prefabrication experiments - 199 - current practices - 10 - Flying Factories

Prefabrication, industrialized construction, manufactured building, modular building or off-site construction, all these terms have often been used interchangeably. Altogether, they relate factory production with architecture or building as a way of increasing productivity, reducing waste and creating an optimal work environment. The key ideas have remained the same since the introduction of manufactured components in architectural systems; a controlled environment reduces risks and waste. Further, overlying parallel on-site and off-site tasks and activities within a project timeline makes absolute sense as certain components can be produced as site infrastructure is handled avoiding exterior rigorous conditions or delays. The factory setting «simply»required some form of standardization/normalization in order for it to be cost effective and to compete with the low-overhead highly agile on-site builder. 

However, mass production has not transferred to architecture as it has to other industries. Each building remains a prototype: singular in its use and an image of clients’ individualized needs and wants. Architecture in general has lacked the rationalized view of manufacturing. There has been a compulsory, if only perceived, complete customization of each building process. Prefabrication has been biased by this required uniqueness for a century. Today, as information technology evolves, the production of architecture in a factory is also changing and adapting to the idea of individualized production. 

The «flying factory» a recent expression relates to a temporary production location, a type of field factory, set up for the length of a project and then folded or moved to another location or project. The benefit of the flying factory is a quick set-up in relative proximity to a project’s construction site to allow for components to be pre-assembled before they are integrated on site. Staged as a transient work site, the flying factory, is essentially a covered and heated work area where assembly takes place. Used, notably by Skanska, a global construction leader, the factory setting is conducive to greater coordination and collaboration as relationships between subtrades are predetermined and tailored according to the factory’s format and specific project requirements. An evolution in lean construction principles, the project-based flying factory concedes the principle disruptive element to the evolution of manufactured architecture - each project is different.

Temporary Factory set up in New York City for a modular building - see  

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2014/04/16/building-the-worlds-tallest-modular-apartment-tower/#7a0d97349859