A mainstream example of the modular, manufactured or mobile home builder’s business model, the Commodore Corporation along with its subsidiaries and partners has been manufacturing affordable housing since the early 1950s. Their segment, the mobile home, although somewhat marginal, represents the successful application of industrialisation to construction. The integrated process harmonizes design, manufacturing and procurement supply chains adjusted to assemble a number of predetermined housing patterns. This combined design and delivery process applied to single-family dwellings relies on a standardized pattern book of models to circumscribe supply chain management, regulatory approvals, quality control, timeline and cost structure while reducing onsite construction risks.
This straightforward business model was tweaked in Commodore Corporation’s proposal for Operation Breakthrough. Along with a number of design firms, manufacturers, research and code specialists the company proposed a reinforced concrete megastructure assembled from «precast» or «prestressed» components for high-density frameworks, steel components for medium-density frameworks, and timber for low-density frameworks. These structural skeletons would carry stacked modular volumetric boxes using Commodore’s established process. Idealized as a simple switch from individualized dwellings to collective dwellings the company would mass-produce up to 30 000 units per year.
The superstructure grid, defined by a 14-foot square horizontal module and a 11-foot vertical module, was dimensioned for fitting normalized 12’ wide, 10’ high and from 44’ to 60’ long modular units. The simplicity with which the system was illustrated displays the long-standing disconnect between dwelling manufacturing and collective housing construction. Interfaces between units were simply omitted or neglected. This simple stacking rhetoric avoided the necessary on site joinery and stitching, which must be detailed and optimized with the same quality control rigor associated with the factory to circumvent onsite entanglements.
The Commodore Corporation would oversee marketing, design, procurement, construction management, module delivery and assembly. This comprehensive building model seems ideal. However the necessary parameters and criteria that come along with collective housing, the correct and robust detailing of sound control or fire control, have been replaced by simple stacking. Omitting interfaces and promoting one-dimensional stacking continues to haunt modular construction. Holistic systemic criteria must be included in project design. If not any real advantages of off site construction are quickly lost.
Proposal rendering - modules inserted into a load-bearing framework
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