Prefabrication experiments - 311 - Icons - 01 - Raymond Camus

 

Prefabrication and industrialization applied to architecture have generated a vast amount of literature and a plethora of experiments both successful and marginal. From this expanse of knowledge, certain attempts stand out and are omnipresent in exhibits, books, journals and in a sense have come to represent the field of industrialized construction even while most failed in bridging the gap between architecture and manufacturing. The next ten posts will examine selected icons in relation to current practices, methods or materials. 

 

The first icon belongs to a flagship master in applying mass production principles to construction. A second-generation industrialist, Raymond Camus founded the «Société Raymond Camus et Compagnie, procédés industriels de construction» in 1949. The umbrella Camus process comprises many patents published from 1948 to 1968 that describe diverse methods for fabricating and assembling reinforced concrete pre-cast panels. Classified as a heavy-duty system, the strategy is a simple wall and slab monolithically jointed framework assembled from surface elements produced in a factory or sometimes onsite. Reconciling the needs of industry with individual dwelling needs the Camus system proposed an open platform of cells into which infill and functional elements could be inserted according to predetermined plans.  

 

Produced horizontally and at arms length, reinforced concrete panels were cast on tables or surfaces with steel reinforcing laid out as required. Once cast, panels could be clad in facing materials for interior or exterior applications. The panels were heat and steam cured on casting stands and in casings. Mechanical tilting tables lifted the concrete panes to the vertical and panels were loaded on trucks for delivery. Weighing up to 6 metric tonnes, the wall and slab panels were tied and mortared together; outstretching rebar was knotted together and concrete cast over and around it creating a monolithic joint.  Panels could be load bearing or non-bearing facing elements. 

 

Camus produced 26500 dwelling units internationally between 1949 and 1960, most in France and the USSR. The name became synonymous with industrialized building systems. Camus' panels and utility core boxes informed a set building pattern used by multiple architects for multiple buildings in various cities. In this sense Camus' building method would certainly still be valued as a formidable industrialized building system today.

photographs of the Camus process

Prefabrication experiments - 310 - Then and now - 10 - Platform theory and Descon Concordia

The concept of a design platform, sometimes identified today as platform DfMA (design for manufacturing and assembly) is a manufacturing principle potentially applied to architecture. First employed by General Motors, platform theory is the application of a structural or modular framework among several nuanced products. Automobile manufacturers generate a range of models from a series of shared component, research, and production optimizations. In architecture and industrialized construction this idea was conveyed by Walter Gropius’ expandable house in 1909. The modular design yielded design variants from a small number of normalized components. 

 

In 1933, Bemis in «The Evolving House» envisaged an analogy between building and automobile production to improve construction’s productivity. This analogy is still cited today as a source of inspiration to make building construction more efficient.  In 2004 architects Kieran and Timberlake published a manifesto «Refabricating Architecture» affirming a comprehensive vision for applying industrial methodologies used for making automobiles, airplanes and ships in the building industry. Arguably a contemporary synonym for «industrialized building system» without the connotation of mass repetition, the design platform implies a much more integrated model of production involving all stakeholders in design, manufacture, production and distribution.   

 

Powered by new modelling potentials, the DfMA platform approach encompasses a digital thread to control, manage and construct, the entire building process before it is shaped on site. In addition, the exchange of data rich objects, pieces or elements allows different stakeholders to adjust design parameters and details in real time; While debated as a new way forward by Bryden Wood, Project Frog, Mod Z modular, WOHO, 369 Pattern Buildings and many more, the platform approach carries an enduring legacy defined by General Motors, Bemis, Gropius and important prototypes like the Descon System. Descon Concordia's proposal for Operation Breakthrough in 1969 is perhaps one of the most comprehensive building systems of the 20th century that foreshadowed the integrated building systems and platform conceptualizations we see today. Using a basic panelized precast concrete modular building kit, Descon defined all aspects and criteria of the planning, manufacturing and construction process into a streamlined, rationalized and coordinated system. Some 50 years later, platform building puts a new spin on this old idea and is an affirmation of how forward thinking the system was. 

Comparative analysis of two platform systems

Prefabrication experiments - 309 - Then and now - 09 - Service cores

 

Modelled on industrialized and centralized production concepts that evolved in the automotive sector at the beginning of the twentieth century, the utility or service core was proposed for dwellings as analogous to an automobile’s engine. Service spaces, kitchens, bathrooms, technical rooms, laundry rooms, appliances and required connections for wiring, piping, or ducting would be combined in an integrated element delivered to operate or control inhabitable space.  Referred to interchangeably as pods, cores, heart or core unit, the concept argued for a serial standardized production in the form of an architectural accessory. 

 

The architectural rationalization of service spaces was driven by new mechanical facilities and a representation of this can be traced to the American Woman's House by Catharine Beecher (1869): a centralized space for production and a flue for extracting air and other waste from the home. The clustering of technical spaces permeated the discipline and architectural pedagogy. The April 1937 issue of Architectural Forum proposed the term “the house's engine” or “power plant”.  The spatial and material expression of served and serving spaces became a canon of modernism. 

 

Besides developing design elements and advanced technologies, the service core continues to uphold the same rhetoric: simplifying the provision of mechanical spaces for dwellings. Two models of the utility core show how little this innovation has changed: Published in an issue of Life magazine in April 15th 1946 as complementary to a series of measures that would help tackle the housing shortage, the Mobilecore developed by a timber frame contractor proposed a service box around which the house could be built conventionally. In the same vein, California company Protohomes, founded in 2009, has devised a house building platform based on the separation of an open adaptable space “hyperspace” and their two-story technical hub “protocore”.  Protohomes proposes a completely digitally integrated and smart hub coordinated in the factory and delivered as a product providing and controlling dwelling amenities in line with modern day needs and further can been seen as a totally connected core. 

 

Even with a rich heritage of exploration, the service core remains marginally applied, mostly driven by producers, but has found certain success in hospitality architecture with repetitive planning patterns.  While arguing for flexibility over time, the factory produced core has often proved to precluded adaptability as its proprietary nature impedes repairs or even finding parts for replacement. 

comparative analysis of two cores

Prefabrication experiments - 308 - Then and now - 08 - Do it yourself systems

Throughout history, building houses was a social act deploying collective methods, knowledge and patterns from generation to generation.  Construction know-how was not exclusive to specific trades or classes. Fishermen, farmers and artisans, all built their own dwellings as their ancestors had before them. Before mechanization and mass production, building one's own home provided the satisfaction of defining, limiting, circumscribing a place and protecting the family unit against climate or predators. 

 

As a reaction to the hyper-specialization of trades and the mass production of dwellings engendered by industrialisation, the late 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of a do-it-yourself movement. Magazines and instructional journals for making a wide range of items became central to this and fuelled an interest in systems that made it possible to be the central figure in the construction of one's own dwelling. Sharing simplified instructions, lists of tools or devices, materials and precise illustrations turned any able-handed person into a master-builder. A-frames, domes, box frames and platform frames were all offered in pre-cut formats including the required hardware to simplify erecting a home with family and a few friends. Walter Segal’s self-build method is an iconic elucidation of a simple timber frame structure though a type of recipe handbook providing technical details as well as arguing for making building a social process.

 

Built on the legacy of pattern, type and instruction literature, the recent homesteading, cottage core interest is linked to a similar need to interact with one's environment and setting responding not to industrialization but to our totally connected surroundings.  As was the case for Walter Segal's more low-tech approach, Wikihouse by Alistair Parvin leverages the affordability of modeling software and digital manufacturing to pave the way for a new generation to construct their home from an open-source kit. Exemplifying the hacker / maker culture applied to a type of architectural meta-design, Wikihouse's CNC production bridges the gap between ability and competence. Both projects in their own way are based on communicating building knowledge and social iteration. Further, specifically for Wikihouse or projects like it, today’s potential crowd enhancement through globalized communication elevates the potential for do-it-yourself to benefit from a limitless social improvement. 

comparative process analysis

Prefabrication experiments - 307 - Then and now - 07 - Ready mades

Prefabrication is a straightforward concept describing making parts and components in advance of their use to construct edifices. This notion is at least as deep-rooted as construction or architecture. Nomadic hunters, Japanese master-carpenters, Roman master-builders, and medieval cathedral stone cutters prepared elements to ensure intelligibility and easy assembly.  Since industrialization, prefabrication has often been used inaccurately as a synonym for mass produced architecture. The pre-made component is not necessarily mass produced or even factory produced, it is simply a unit or element ready for use. This «ready-made» methodology also intimates using, reusing or repurposing objects. The assembly of housing from train cars studied by Bertrand Goldberg, the stacking of ready-made shipping containers, or the construction of earth ships from recycled tires all speak to this type of «ready-made» strategy; Architecture cobbled together with these components, subassemblies, or pieces is the basis of a more frugal way of approaching design and construction. The use of ready-made objects or even the objet trouvé transferred from its original use to dwelling underlines a sensibility usually associated with vernacular construction. Bottles, tires, or concrete infrastructure pipes can be stacked, juxtaposed, aligned, into a dense framework creating walls, inhabitable hives or any inhabitable device.   

 

Another architectural option in the «ready-made» realm is to design an object shape or space that is the key unit of a modular building system; a type of predetermined large chunk of a building. Guy Dessauges living tubes from concrete cylinders demonstrates this specific type of ready to use component system. Concrete tubes cast orthogonally on one end and obliquely on the other become the basic shapes stacked and attached to a vertical service core on their straight end and open to the environment on their oblique end. Similarly shipping containers continuously inspire box-type construction from ready mades. The Plug-in school from People's Architecture Office uses this basic idea to design a scalable system from interchangeable volumetric units that are designed to work and connect like containers. Inspired by the simple corrugated shell construction or concrete shell both proposals imply a type of batch production of elements that can then be assembled in a variety of compositions depending on function, span, scope or context. 

comparative analysis by pre[FABRICA]tions

Prefabrication experiments - 306 - Then and now - 06 - Megastructures

 

The Second World War devastated many cities and countries. The war effort also delayed housing construction and expended resources both human and material. The acute need for housing that followed was an accumulation of prewar and wartime shortages. The postwar baby boom also increased demand for affordable housing as well as every other type of social service edifice from schools to hospitals. Governments invested massively in redirecting military-industrial complexes toward housing to improve production capacity and maintain power in the event of future conflicts.  

 

Japan was particularly affected and invested heavily in the development of technologies for the housing industry. Influenced by architectural modernity, vertical, collective housing became a focus of rebuilding. Industrialization with an important emphasis on automation introduced new ways of making things and eventually led to the Toyota Production System, equally as disruptive as Henry Ford's model had been in early 20th century USA. The Japanese prefabricated housing industry evolved in this context and inspired the stacking of manufactured units onto vertical support structures. These open structures, analogous to a mega-shelf, provided all the essential common services for the amassed dwellings. Mass produced integrated capsules could be inserted, moved and interchanged in a variety of support structures. A somewhat impractical solution as the stacking either requires redundant structural components or a secondary structure, which increases costs and resource use. Still projects like Habitat 67 epitomized the application of this architectural utopia. While related to Japanese metabolism, this same mega-structure strategy inspired less architectural visions; Elmer Frey explored the simple stacking of his mobile homes to create vertical mobile home parks.

 

Today, the megastructure containing customizable housing units idea is seeing a resurgence driven by rapid urbanization and a significant need for housing construction around the world. Prefabricated units that can be inserted into a support structure is theoretically suitable for vertical density since the units can be produced concurrently to the onsite megastructure’s assembly reducing construction time and in principle, costs.  The Townland system (Boeing) produced for Operation Breakthrough and Vending Pod Skyscraper Tower (Haseef Rafiei) share this heritage of the construction of a common infrastructure into which lightweight units can be aggregated. The pod tower goes even further showcasing that today's rapidly evolving digital fabrication technology that makes it possible to literally print or produce dwellings onsite combining two concepts of 20^th century prefabrication: mechanization and the megastructure. 

comparative analysis of two megastructure proposals

Prefabrication experiments - 305 - Then and now - 05 - Universal Connectors

 

The essence of architecture can be defined by well-thought-out connections between elements, components, materials and systems. How things are juxtaposed, secured, fixed, or joined become iconic representations of an era and even narrate changing styles in architecture. For modern architects, the honest illustration of connections or the camouflage of systems under a coat of white was emblematic of either a rejection of ornament or exposing technology as new form of representation. During modernity, influenced by military engagement, industrialized and standardized connections became the focal point of much research proposing variable building kits from a limited number of interchangeable parts. Konrad Wachsmann’s contribution is well documented and was inspired by his training as a furniture maker. His work on prefab houses with Christof and Unmack, his explorations for mega-spanning space frame hangars for the US Air force and his most iconic collaboration with Walter Gropius, the General panel House were all based on his obsession with inventing a universally applicable connector.

 

Other well-known connectors, Unistrut's Moduspan, Mero’s sphere, the Abstracta modular system and the Canadian Triodetic aluminum connector, carried the same vision articulated to maximum architectural variability and structural potential with minimum components. The universal connector is based on the idea of connecting lines or surfaces from points or vertices which inform a geometric play of struts, posts, columns and beams, to achieve any shape or form: spheres, vaults, slabs or more organic free-forms. Reticulated structures, trusses or space frames famously deploy this vision toward maximum span with minimum weight and continue to inspire new generations looking to explore formal possibilities offered by new digital modeling, fabrication, and management tools.  Universality today no longer relates uniquely to the plurality of forms, but also to data richness integrated in the connector’s underlying parameters making it possible to envision a type of self-developing connector coded to respond to all manner of generative data. Even with all these potentials, connectors like Unistrut and Triodetic still are used in the same way not because of a resistance to technology but because of this joinery's capacity to adapt to any forms, designed by digital or analog means, and flexible enough to respond to any era’s functional demands.

 

comparative analysis of two universal connectors

Prefabrication experiments - 304 - Then and now - 04 - Dwelling Capsules

Capsule dwellings are in a way the architectural discipline's counterproposal to the development of the commercially successful mobile home. Making houses as manufactured commodities drove a host of proposals by architects. From an industrial design perspective, the capsule or dwelling pod would be an efficient machine, employ new methods, demonstrate new material potentials, and optimize each square centimeter of space. Inspired by modernists and their obsession with the Minimum Dwelling (1932), the capsule evolved as a response to housing crises, affordability and post war rebuilding policies. Conceptually distant from the more conventional mobile home, the minimal dwelling was hyper-designed as an entirely autonomous unit, adaptable to any context and as a complete work in the modern sense.  Imagined concurrently to both the mobile home and the Levittown bungalow, capsule dwellings eliminated any traditional iconography, made place or context indeterminate, and increasingly borrowed from parallel industries, vehicular design or even space age design that idealized mobility.  Pushed by post-war rebuilding and industrial automation, the metabolist architectural movement in Japan was the most obvious demonstration of the capsule dwelling and its aesthetic. 

 

In the Prefabricated Home (2005), Colin Davies argued that this idealized representation of the house as a manufactured, mechanized and mobile product contributed to distancing the capsule's founding fields (architecture and industry) with architects moving toward an idealized and marginalized version of the prefab house.  As the pendulum swings back in the direction of manufacturing technologies bridging both fields, we are seeing a resurgence of the architect-industry partnership.  Richard Roger’s Y-cube, Kenzo Kuma's experiments with MUJI,  and Renzo Piano’s Diogene Retreat with Vitra are just a few recent examples of the capsule anchored to contemporary lifestyles. The Koda microhouse, from Kodasema, frames this current segment's objectives. Similar to Kurokawa’s Leisure Capsule, the Koda series is defined and designed in its most precise details, but is not represented as a futuristic system as it conforms to present day design conventions.  Separated by half a century, both proposals eloquently demonstrate the enduring obsession with the machine for living. Today’s dwelling capsule speaks to our connected culture combined with a nostalgia for a David Thoreau-like lifestyle. A union of these opposed ideals frames the integrated capsule as a wearable commodity, a mass customizable inhabitable and ergonomic skin offering a perceived simplicity with a complex globalized connectivity. 

Comparative analysis by pre [FABRICA] tions

Prefabrication experiments - 303 - Then and now - 03 - The mobile home

The dream of industrializing house construction is at least as old as the motivation that led to the automobile’s invention from horse-drawn carts. An aspiration and narrative carried by industrialists, builders and architects has been the subject of many publications and exhibitions. In 1951, Burnham Kelley published one of the most extensive inventories and complete encyclopedic works on the topic. Even with all its celebrated potential for lowering costs and increasing efficiencies, the industrialized house remained marginally applied save for one segment, which has become its emblem. The trailer coach or the mobile home now referred to as a manufactured house is constructed on a mobile chassis, completed in a factory ready to be delivered and placed on any site. This sector represents 6.4% of the total real estate stock in the United States with an average production of approximately 100,000 units per year. Benefiting from the HUD code released in 1974, the factory-built home has endeavored to shed the suspect construction connotations that haunted the sector since the 1950s. HUD’s endorsement certainly helped the mobile home’s successful commercialization. 

 

Evolving from simple 8-foot-wide self-built trailers to Elmer Frey's «tenwydes», double-wides and eventually to stacking premade units to create multi-unit buildings, the mobile home combined all dwelling functions into a uniquely integrated house - machine including the advantages of simplified ownership and relocatability. Today, the financial crisis of the early 2000s, environmental imperatives and the individualization of lifestyles underscore a quest for a simplified and ecological existence, untethered by mortgages and permanent dwellings. The «architectural» mobile home inspired by the "tiny house" or micro house movement fills the pages of design magazines or websites and provides an opportunity for architects to renew their interest in homes as products, part and parcel of globalized and connected culture. The Alpod designed by Cybertecture with Arup exemplifies the commodification of the mobile home no longer identified as a subpar dwelling system but as a smart - connected product. The home designed as an intelligent connected device brings us full circle in the application of the factory-made house as an object that bridges the fields of architecture and manufacturing.

Comparative analysis pre[FABRICAT]ions

Prefabrication experiments - 302 - Then and Now - 02 - industrialized components

Mechanization applied to Onsite building reformed construction; its major implication was the development of an innumerable variety of elements, pieces, components, and products, rapidly, affordably, and according to rigorous dimensional parameters. These products were cataloged for every use and illustrated in trade journals that shifted architectural design from artisan-based decisions to an informed «bricolage» of cataloged and mass-produced parts. A quick look at the FW Dodge Sweets Catalog (1909-) published as the classifying system for the industry in North America offers a glimpse into a normalized systemic relationship between the factory and the design process.  Replaced today by on-line editions, the Sweets catalogues were a staple of architectural design firms’ libraries. Component interoperability, another tenet of industrialization, outlined modular coordination and systemic classification of building design methodology. 

 

The mass production of objects or parts diversified even further into the supply of many different options from basic components. Textures, profiles, adjustable shapes or colors, pieces could be molded, rolled or embossed with differentiated mechanical and automated continuity. Further, batch production made it possible to mass produce series of particularized elements if the quantity justified the development of a specific die or mold.  

 

Frank Lloyd Wright's “textile blocks” carry this heritage as the same basic interlocking masonry unit was molded, repeated but diversified by replacing the its facing. The design of a singular surface from a mass-produced block became the symbol of multiple iconic Wright houses.   Today’s manufacturing potentials further enhance this customization potential. Wright's textile blocks' lots were contingent to quantity, however digital fabrication tools simplify the onerous development of dies for molds and introduce the idea of a reduced series from a printed or digitally produced form. Emerging Objects’ Quake Column, part of a similar tradition of interlocking ashlar inspired stonework illustrates this new direction where architects invent intelligent and specifically designed components and even define the instructions for their use. Where the textile block required a dimensional standardization according to a normalized mold, the 3d printing technique used by Emerging Objects removes the pattern mold from the process by producing completely customized interlocking parts. 

Comparative analysis of Textile Blocks and Quake Column

Prefabrication experiments - 301 - Then and now - 01 - Mechanization

 

Construction in its simplest form can be described as moving, lifting, positioning and assembling materials and components in a setting to make inhabitable macro-objects: edifices. Since prehistory, humans have fashioned aids and devices for tasks difficult to accomplish by human power alone. Simple levers, inclined planes, screws and pulleys are inseparable from building culture. Industrialization improved and expanded these implements by replacing animal or human power with formidable and efficient energies: steam, oil and electricity. All manner of devices for every job or scale transform construction sites into veritable open-air factories. Mechanization outlined an ethos of efficiency and increased output on construction sites which remains an impactful obstacle to the real potential of prefabrication or factory produced sub-assemblies, as mechanization makes on-site construction both flexible and adaptable.  

 

The self-propelled overhead crane (Rudolf Bredt, 1875) is a symbol of how industrialisation simplified making things as any size objects could be moved around factories and sites with relative ease. In some instances, machines even made it possible to invent new materials; reducing carbon content to produce steel is directly related to the Henry Bessemer's invention (Bessemer Converter, 1856). 

 

Today, mechanization continues to influence greater efficiencies on construction sites, and has been complemented in the last decade by powerful computerized tools and even artificial intelligence that direct autonomous machines to achieve a variety of building tasks. Robot masons, autonomous site inspecting cobots, or the precise casting of fluid materials by drones are examples that relate to the same basic “moving, lifting and placing”, but are controlled digitally. 

 

In relation to construction's industrialization, machines were invented to increase affordability and apply principles of manufacturing to house construction. Two interesting examples, The Tournalayer one-cast house system (1946) and The Apis Cor 3d printer (2014) are part of the same culture of mechanization in two very different eras. Both aim to improve efficiencies and simplify dwelling construction in any context. The methods are compared in the schematic below to show how they are part of a similar spectrum of industrialization, to illustrate how each relates to an overall production methodology. This comparison highlights elements that continue to defy offsite construction's uptake or to underline the debate between customization or standardization, namely the complex relationship between design, construction and manufacturing.

Comparative analysis of the Tournalayer and Apis Cor - drawings by pre[FABRICA]tions

Prefabrication experiments - 300 - 00 - What have I learned ?

After 300 posts and eight years of applied research in the field of off-site construction, post 300 seemed like a suitable milestone to stop and ask a simple question: Even with all the cited advantages of offsite construction combined with the current research pointing to uptake supported by the fourth industrial revolution, why is the percentage of manufactured building still fairly low and why is a resistance still palpable in both implicated fields: architecture and construction?  Academics, industrialists and protagonists point to fundamental improvements in the fabrication of every commercialized object, automobiles, cellular phones, computers, both from manufacturing methodologies and the industrial design process in particular, buildings remain mired in one-off processes. 

 

After (66) years, perhaps Sigfried Giedion's (1954) take still expresses the underlying problem, especially in housing. Even though each house is similar and relies on identical products and customs, consumers like the idea of getting a bespoke dwelling that they feel they had a hand in producing. While this is certainly a cultural precept and countries like Japan, and some Scandinavian countries seem to have less of a singularity complex when it comes to housing design, an overwhelming need for uniqueness remains present globally. If we examine Gideon's theory further it can lead to the idea that building was a cultural and social construct before becoming an industrialized one; cars, boats, phones and other commodities have been manufactured and added to the home as individualized add-ons, as accessories to the fundamental act of dwelling. Houses and buildings are not products in essence but productions of socialized building culture based on contextual variables. 

 

This leads back to another reactionary theory on industrialization. Habraken's conceptualization of supports and infill admitted the necessary interaction between an inhabitant and his or her dwelling: Understanding one's capacity to build, modify or even adapt one’s own environment. Habraken argued for industrialized collective elements, while individualized elements could be contextualized based on design pattern methodology.  Where do both ideas direct the future of offsite construction? While commodities are mass produced and are relatively the same in every country, building techniques, methods, bylaws, codes, trades, customs still and arguably will continue to vary from country to country and sometimes even within countries; building in the south of Canada is completely different from building in the its Arctic territories. Contextual variables, site, climate, traditions, impede the same type of mass integration that goes on in other production sectors. 

 

Still, prefabrication was and can be an important part of building culture and remains an object of study proposing to rationalize building. The platform approach being posited by many today admits the necessary customization and envisions open kit systems that could be made adaptable to a great number of varied situations from similar parts and processes. Perhaps this more open form of industrialization combined with a digitally driven prototyping process develops a new era of mechanisation in construction. Co-bots, robots or even drones applied to construction increase the potential efficiencies of onsite construction, making the onsite - offsite construction debate moot as digital fabrication can increase uniqueness while increasing productivity.  

Giedion's take on barriers to prefabricated housing

Prefabrication experiments - 299 - Trade literature - 10 _ Government intervention

 

Beyond the lobbying efforts of trade organisations looking to increase industrialization of construction, for their members' benefits, political agendas have also played an important role in disseminating manufacturing methodologies in construction. To increase productivity and reduce expenditures for civic buildings, policies have ranged from obliging a percentage of offsite construction to specifying performance-based offsite practices. Both strategies imply that governments become promoters of off-site construction. 

 

Two notable historic examples, Operation Breakthrough in the USA (1969) and the GSK program in Japan (1971)  discussed construction's lagging productivity and idealized efficient manufacturing methodologies to argue for applying production theories to architecture. While both programs did not immediately succeed in reforming artisanal construction, they were a fertile ground for developing novel ideas, systems, methods and strategies. About a decade ago, in Malaysia, a similar initiative for increasing productivity outlined the phrase Industrialized Building System from the examination of best practices in industrialized construction in both Europe and America going back to the 1960s. As of 2008, seventy percent IBS content of all contracted public work’s buildings became a requirement. 

 

IBSs include but are not limited to the use of open and interoperable component based modular volumetric systems employed for a variety of building types. The government promotes an open systems approach for harmonizing on and offsite construction and has devised a plan for increased interoperability between systems. Almost a century after it was first studied in other nations; MC or modular coordination defines a dimensional matrix applied to building materials and components. 100mm or 1M is the smallest unit, like Bemis' 4-inch module used in construction since the early twentieth century, modular coordination facilitates planning and leads to simpler and repeatable assemblies.

 

While the government has defined the basic framework of IBS and prescribed the 70% threshold for all public buildings, some data shows that conventional builders still seem to prefer onsite building methods as the greater startup costs in IBS precludes fair competition. IBS requires more upfront planning, greater stakeholder collaboration and increased overhead costs linked to factory production. Even as offsite's advantages are clear and seem too great to pass up, especially in an era of rapid urbanization, increasing uptake still remains challenged by the artisan's perceived flexibility and adaptability. 

Box units or modular construction is part of the 70% baseline for IBSs in Malaysia

 

Prefabrication experiments - 298 - Trade literature - 09 - Modular and Portable Building Association's learning hub

The acute demand for affordable housing in cities is well documented. In the UK for example, it’s estimated that up to 8,4 million people live in either inadequate, unaffordable or unsafe conditions (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49787913). As in past eras of housing crises, the problem’s enormity forces all stakeholders involved in the procurement or provision of dwellings to scrutinize all aspects of housing’s development. Construction's stagnating productivity is a subject that gets ample publicity and attention as an area that could be improved to deliver quality and affordable dwellings. Today as in the past, off-site construction is promoted as a way forward. Prefabrication's sometimes questionable reputation and connotation was generated in these moments of social turmoil. Post-war prefabs were wrought with doubtful construction quality giving the entire industry a standing that it’s still, in some ways, trying to abdicate. 

 

Every industrialized nation seems to have a similar record with offsite construction driven by early twentieth century production methods and sustained through trade organizations and government policies. Recently the industry has been tackling these connotations in an increasingly aggressive fashion as modular is envisioned as a growing field responding at once to a need for houses and to critical labor shortages in certain traditional construction trades. While modular is becoming mainstream, it's potential to compete with traditional construction both in matters of cost and quality is largely still a matter of perception and sometimes ignorance regarding its true potentials. 

 

Britain’s Modular and Portable Building Association was founded in 1938. Like many other modular building institutes, it is a member driven lobby group that promotes modular construction through its role as an advisory body working to normalize processes and products toward a greater uptake in Off-site construction. An important initiative, part of their role in promoting quality, is the MPBA's learning hub which strives to leverage education and training to offer National Vocational Qualifications, fostering methods and strategies framed by best practices. The Diploma in Innovative Modern Methods of Construction for Modular, Portable Building addresses the need for training tradespeople with the specific knowledge required to offer quality manufactured buildings. Trade associations play an important role in educating both the consumer and the producer.

Link to the Learning Hub
http://learninghub-mpba.biz

 

Prefabrication experiments - 297 - Trade literature - 08 - Prefab NZ and the Unipod

Membership based organizations are a form of trade group or cluster that federate stakeholders through corporate ambitions to either boost their market share or advertise untapped potentials. These organisations, usually funded by founding partners or companies can also be initiated and sustained by government policy. Recently, the Off-site construction industry has set up multiple manufacturer member associations in various countries to announce the benefits industrialized construction.

 

PefabNZ was created in 2010 following the publication of a student's master's thesis (Pamela Bell) who argued for Off-site construction as a more sustainable way of building explicitly in reaction to New Zealand's housing crisis. Prefab NZ organizes training, publication and design initiatives to move the industry forward through industry and practice-based research. A notable design competition organized in 2016 requested proposals for utility wall or service cores; integrated baths, kitchens or combo pods that could be factory produced, delivered and set into buildings on-site. 

 

The winning entry designed by First Light Studio is essentially a «thick» core-wall containing a back-to-back configuration of kitchen and bath connected to all necessary ducting, plumbing and wiring. The Uni-pod proposal articulates its procurement and design methodology to an open source framework and can be included as part of any building system. The idea of a pre-approved open-source service core is not a new idea. Prefab NZ in this respect continues some of the theoretical exercises related to prefab since the early twentieth century. 

 

The service core is a recurring experiment positing efficient synchronisation between factory and onsite building. The Unipod and what has been described as «The service Unit» or «The Heart Unit» or even «The Home's Engine» endeavour to simplify plumbing connections to avoid on-site conflicts.  Very simplistic core units were installed in the UK's post war prefab houses. The UK-100 designed by the UK Ministry of Works included plumbing for kitchen and bath and was linked to a hot-water tank. Built-into prefabs as of 1946, it is important to note that many UK houses did not have indoor toilets at the time. This was an innovation that inspired many of the advances in service distribution within industrialized dwellings. The Unipod in the same way reimagines the core as an integrated piece of conventional construction refocusing prefab strategy toward primary functional spaces within dwellings. 

Unipod (left), UK-100 (right)

 

Prefabrication experiments - 296 - Trade literature - 07 - Serial postal building

 

From delivering houses to building new schools, normalized buildings intellectualized and characterized as repeatable have been a focal point for industrialized building system protagonists. Serialization of specific building types could be planned to facilitate every part of the construction process from assigning professionals to purchasing materials and commissioning builders. Repetition mitigates the risks associated with conventional design and building practice. Even with the connotations associated with producing identical architecture, serial building with manufacturing design, production and management principles makes it possible to determine, compare, evaluate and gauge quality. Public and civic buildings, part of government purchasing policy, have in many countries been a fertile ground for promoting or sustaining industrial clusters by developing a coordinated building process through prearranged typologies. 

 

An interesting case project undertaken in Italy in the 1970s leveraged the reinforced concrete industry to develop a standard post-office building system from made-to-stock precast reinforced concrete components. The precast modular pieces were conceived for a one-story structure. Pier-Luigi Spadolini, architect and industrial designer, was mandated to design this simple system for updating civic structures’ quality being built in small communities in Italy at the time. The post-office as a pattern would inform all manner of civic buildings to ensure coherence throughout public procurement and production policies. 

 

Mandated by the Italian Postal service and department of Telecommunications, the standard building was arranged on economical modular structural spans, either cast on site or in steel post and beam skeletons.  The spans’ division into smaller grids coordinated all other systems and components.  Measurements, arrangements and model sizes were defined by community needs, ministry regulations, bylaws and existing spatial criteria. The precast components and curtain wall elements included textured panel elements for walls, columns and transom panels. These patterned elements would become, in theory, the trademark of the postal service. Spadolini’s comprehensive approach deployed the modern design principle of «oevre complete» - complete work.  The small postal building’s kit-of-parts included physical building components, details and a coherent strategy for everything from signage, to wayfinding and building identification. This type of serial or batch building applied to civic structures exemplifies the potential for a shared approach to streamline design, procurement and management for government agencies. 

Modular precast concrete panels 

 

Prefabrication experiments - 295 - Trade literature - 06 - Patterns

Patterns in architecture are shaped from years of common knowledge and have been studied extensively. Christopher Alexander and John Habraken have written comprehensively about how patterns define validated relationships between elements and parts of the built environment. Pattern books in architecture connect to this concept of composing form from longstanding strategies, components and imagery. How a porch relates to a street, or how a window relates to a courtyard, or even more formally how a series of façades relate to a plaza or a public square. These are established ways of making cities or edifices and invoke the open sharing of knowledge that underscores building culture. 

 

In their most basic form, patterns inform, educate and multiply recognized organizations, configurations and relationships. Patterns also relate to other design fields. In fashion, pattern drawings or stencils are used in do-it-yourself culture, making it feasible to cut and sew anything from dresses to coats and sweaters. In architecture, the complexity of building and the number of arranged parts have impeded similar normalized instructions for fabrication. 

 

Today the platform approach to DFMA (design for manufacturing and assembly) promoted as an efficient way forward for industrialized construction, is based on the notion that building is all about repeating patterns for procurement, fabrication, delivery, setting and positioning or for assembly. Further these patterns could lead to a customizable architecture from encoded parts. Architects, trade associations, modular groups are theorizing this platform building approach to provide models to construct collective framed typologies. One of these initiatives, 369 Pattern Buildings ( https://patternbuildings.com ), is a cooperative effort conceived in mass timber. The design showcases how, in a similar way to the automobile industry, multiple buildings can be constructed from the same chassis or modular frame. The mass timber skeletal framework and steel connectors are used as a modular unit in a type of stacked, aligned or juxtaposed container system. Licensed under collective commons, it is assembled from a series of interoperable parts; the structure, infrastructure, mechanical and spatial elements are defined leaving the interior fit-out to be personalized. This structure versus infill approach stems from the continued influence of pattern building forged by pioneers like Alexander or Habraken. 

Parts of the 369 Pattern Building system

 

Prefabrication experiments - 294 - Trade literature - 05 - Politics, materials and the war effort

Cooperative capitalism or nationalistic autarky are influential themes in architecture. Both stem from similar political perspectives for representing authority.  Combining political rhetoric with industrial clusters and trade guilds in the formalization of monuments has been the basis of architectural symbolism in all civilizations. Through industrialisation, trade associations and material lobby groups became vital actors in enacting policies. This type of commercial promotion or patriotism was intensely utilized to uphold and nourish military capabilities during the tumultuous decades before and after World War II. The aviation sector was a flagship area for this type of experimentation. Reinforced concrete, in Europe and in Italy in particular, became the emblematic material for the war effort. Pier Luigi Nervi's experiments with military devices including airplane hangars substantiate the use of a material to depict architectural potentials and political potency.

 

Even though concrete, steel and aluminum are often associated with the war effort and military buildings, North America’s bountiful forests begot milled timber as the symbol of nation building in the USA. The balloon frame became the primary system used to build horizontal cities from small repeatable pieces. The National Lumber Manufacturers Association endorsed wood as a modern material adapted to any use and even military use for certain types of buildings. Their periodic publication «Lumber and Its Utilizations» in 1941 showcased timber’s potential for prefabrication and airplane hangar structures. The publication described how timber could be used in all manner of truss systems to attain considerable spans for shed roofs of any scope or size. From bowstring, to flat and lamella trusses, the description compares timber span potentials to other materials citing significant savings of 25% compared to other materials. Along with cost savings, the authors describe timber structures as simple to assemble and disassemble, mobile and adaptable to future changes. 

 

Fire safety has always been a contested part of timber construction and its regulation as it is a combustible material. As is still the case today, the wood association argued that compared to steel which often becomes an entangled fused and melted mess after a fire, mass timber's auto-extinguishing capacity makes certain members salvageable by reinforcing them on-site after removing a charred thickness. The catalogue includes sample buildings with bills of materials and components suggesting the trade association acting as building promoters.

Beech Aircraft Airplane Hangar

Prefabrication experiments - 293 - Trade literature - 04 - Lobby groups

Advocates for the use of new techniques in architecture come in many shapes; Architects, industrialists, or inventors have played an important role in providing successful examples of how materials can contribute to reforming construction.  Steel, reinforced concrete, plastics and aluminum all associated with modern architecture were invented and perfected during years of important social turmoil and technical advancements. Materials were part of the war effort, concrete for bunkers, steel for arms, and aluminum and plastics for lightweight components. As knowledge and experiments with these new materials crossed from specialized military to more general use, producers and their associations took part in their sponsorship. Lobbying for sustaining both supply and demand for particular materials in construction is still the main goal of trade and manufacturer associations using publications, trade shows and marketing. The affiliation between architects and these trade and manufacturer associations is not a recent one and in some ways carry on the role of medieval guilds. 

 

Architects through their experiments and material use advocate and argue for specific strategies and in some ways become advertising pawns supporting the work of trade associations. This is evident in the 1964, 174-page publication by the Portland Cement Producers Association titled Architectural Applications on Concrete in buildings. The catalogue presents projects from all over the USA employing reinforced concrete in original ways ranging from more normalized use in skeletons to more magnificent forms employing thin shells or illustrating the efficiencies of precast components leveraged toward multiple building systems. 

 

Rendered or photographed as collected fragments each system is included as part of a growing corpus of works underlining the creative relationship between architects and a material brought to the forefront by producers.  An interesting side bar note in the catalogue : a list of architectural projects showcase exposed concrete (released of its formwork) with little decorative work then an entire section at the end of the catalogue showcases little architectural work but a great variety of potential surface textures. The contrast between modern architectural work, validated by the discipline, and more common use reveals the distinct role of both lobby groups’ intentions: architects for architecture and producers for production, two solitudes and fields brought together through a common objective. 

Page from the catalogue

 

 

Prefabrication experiments - 292 - Trade literature and associations - 03 - Patent for saw-toothed roofs

Building techniques, construction methods and strategies are explained and displayed everyday on on-line platforms, through social media or specialized websites, supporting the idea that architecture and building is a democratic, shared and collective phenomenon. Proprietary knowledge or systems did not really exist until the 15th century.  Subsequently during industrialization, the number of patents filed for different building methodologies exploded morphing architecture and construction from artisan based common processes to fragmented and enterprise directed practices. 

 

Even the most mundane construction methods became the object of published patents. Building types, assemblies, processes, machines were the subject of industrial secrets to be controlled and circumscribed by copyright laws. Companies portrayed themselves as holders of a unique production method, which could only be used through licensing or contracting. 

 

What is known today as a building platform, commercialized to achieve mass production, is in a sense a by-product of patent culture.  The Ballinger Company of Philadelphia, a collective of architects and engineers obtained a patent in 1921 (USRE15133E) for a method for constructing saw-tooth roofs. This type of roof is recognised as the icon of the factory building. The roof cross section is composed of a series of inclined and vertical planes (creating a profile similar to a saw blade) alternating from opaque roof (inclined) to transparent (vertical) for daylighting interior spaces. In their company catalogue published in 1924, the Ballinger Company promoted the Super-span Saw-tooth building as a novel way of covering industrial properties improving the quality of interior of factories through natural light and ventilation. The Ballinger company's proprietary component was a super-span truss, where the inclined and vertical edges outlined a horizontal filigree beam, spanning open spaces unrestricted from interior supporting columns, an improvement to regular saw-tooth construction, which required beams and columns at each roof valley intersection. The company preferred to be mandated for both architectural and engineering services for their buildings, however they would licence their system to other builders as well. 

 

Hennebique, Freyssinet, Nervi, Fuller, and their modern acolytes used patents to monopolize their architectural obsessions. The patent evidenced knowledge of a topic and in the best cases looked into the existing art outlining a complete understanding of a technique. Company literature structured this knowledge and offered design guidelines for deploying proprietary systems.

Page from Super-span truss catalogue