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