Prefabrication experiments - 291 - Trade literature and associations - 02 - American Bridge Modular Schools

Advocating the use of manufacturing principles in architecture and construction, industry lobby groups and trade associations regularly outline strategies for increasing demand and normalizing supply chains for their products and member companies. Catalogues and publications have been used to showcase these commercial possibilities, charting systemic design and production methods for unlocking a market share. The catalogue of types or patterns, different from the product catalogue, identifies interoperable components, their manufacturing parameters and design criteria organized for specific building type or arrangement.  While the pattern book is not a new device for sharing knowledge, industrialization elevated its use during the 20th century as a collective instrument for industrial segments or clusters; Industrial initiatives that combine and federate government policies, manufacturers and supply chains to focus on supplying a market segment regarded as a reserve of concentrated demand. 

 

The steel industry was very successful in federating stakeholders toward standardized production methods for buildings. This steered shared specifications, documentation and data to facilitate interaction between design, manufacturing and construction.  A catalogue of modular schools produced in 1958 by the American Bridge division of US steel highlights of this type of inter-association activity.  The Ambridge Modular School engaged and responded to the classroom shortage that followed the post war baby boom.   In the 1950s, the number of primary age students increased by 150%. Existing schools were insufficient and inadequate and many had to be remodeled, replaced or rebuilt. 

 

US steel and Ambridge upheld the idea that steel structures were open, flexible and adaptable systems as skeletal frameworks eliminated any load-bearing walls.  Planning was grid-based on relatively large unobstructed spans. Open joists and girders from 8' (2,4m) to 96' (30m) depending on required spans were proposed for floors or roofs and created an open network for servicing modern schools with lighting, ventilation, etc. Along with the structural frame, stressed skin panels provided a straightforward modular system for divisions and exterior walls. Steel decking was set over the joists and framework ready for a concrete slab topping or any flooring materials. Steel structures manifested modernity in matters of adaptability as steel skeletons could easily change according to fluctuating demographics and be rearranged, expanded vertically or horizontally as required. 

Modular school catalogue

Prefabrication experiments - 290 - Trade literature and associations - 01- Catalogues

Catalogues, trade journals, pattern books are a valuable part of communicating building knowledge. In large part, these traditional paper publications have been replaced by on-line versions containing standard examples and precise data about every conceivable component involved in the erection of edifices. Their usefulness is central to rationalizing building design and construction. Architects use catalogues to pick and specify ready to use components and creatively assemble these disparate elements into an original vision of a building. 

 

It can be argued that such catalogues have impeded industrialized building system’s comprehensive application as the catalogue is essentially an all-encompassing industrialized building kit offering an infinite number of possibilities and arrangements. Perhaps the best known version of a universal building part book, the Sweets building catalogue first published by the FW Dodge Company in 1921 included company and manufacturer literature for all building elements in one uniformly and largely accessible publication. Last printed in 2012, putting an end to a century of issues, it has been replaced by an on-line edition. Organized according to the Masterformat classification system (MasterFormat is a standard for organizing specifications and building products in North America), the on-line version offers a one-stop shop for everything building: for specifications, procurement, cad drawings, BIM models and material data sheets potentially harmonizing a building's systematic documentation process. The Sweets catalogue is now a virtual object library for architects to easily access, detail, assemble information in a coordinated virtual design and construction process. A building's contractual documents are no longer limited to passive elements such as drawn or written instructions or notes, but can be connected in real-time to on-line databases for monitoring their correct integration. The building is progressively being envisioned as a comprehensive object connected to on-line performance-based catalogues to monitor the building products' cost, characteristics and eventually even service life advising owners of replacement time or replacement features and criteria. 

 

The ten following posts will explore the trade association as part of the larger lobbying force in architecture that spawned the catalogue as the basis for marketing products for architects. More specifically we examine organizations that share knowledge, guide building culture and federate their member companies and political partners toward democratized visions of industrialized construction.

Sweets sample page (top) Sweets on-line database (bottom)

 

Prefabrication experiments - 289 - Modular city building - 10 - Vertical support structures

An acute need for affordable housing, specialized labour shortages and the digitalization of architecture and construction are outlining a new era for modular and off-site construction protagonists to argue for construction’s industrialization. As was the case between and after the two world wars in war ravaged nations or for supplying the needs of the baby boom, factory production was touted as the way forward to quickly supply affordable, sanitary and adequate living quarters. Today’s circumstances present a similar state of crisis (environmental, migratory, sanitary) leading governments, trade associations, and professionals toward prefab and a new harvest of experiments ranging from mass produced models to one-off prototypes both making the case for applying manufacturing principles to building construction. 

 

Architects specifically, have rediscovered the modernist tenet associated with providing affordable housing that examines the relationship between production and habitability. The concept of habitability was linked to personalisation; staunch modernists, Gropius, Le Corbusier and their harsh functionalist critics such as N.J. Habraken posited similar visions that industrialization and individuality could be synchronised through generic frameworks complemented by customizable parts or planning principles. From this basic vision, the open building theory, the argument for supports and infill, and the notion of adaptability percolated architectural academia and spawned a great variety of proposals pursuing the systemic separation of shared structure and personal interior dwelling systems. These ideas were represented in a number of formats, however LeCorbusier's famous sketch of a hand inserting an individual unit into a vertical structural racking is perhaps the most notable. He offered an ideological simplification of how a modular city could be structured.

  

Founded in 2013 by architects Dayong Sun and Chris Precht, the architecture studio Penda imagined a similar modular framework onto which customizable elements would be attached or layered.   Designed forVijayawada, India, the vertical tower, designed as a generic shared infrastructure, is a recent example of the separation of supports and infill. Dwellers could pick and choose fit-out options from a catalogue.  Further the architects have a proposed a series of elements like balconies and vertical gardens to suit dwellers’ individuality. The juxtaposition of Penda’s sketch with Le Corbusier’s famous representation shows the cyclical nature of mass housing ideas for applying industrialization (generic) to architecture (specific).

Penda Studio's representation (left) ; Le Corbusier's (right)

Prefabrication experiments - 288 - modular city building - 09 - Ready-made concrete pipes as houses

Module, modular or modules are terms sometimes employed interchangeably. A module in architecture is the smallest common unit of measure in an architectural arrangement or system. Modular construction also denotes volumetric construction, building edifices from factory-produced boxes. These boxes, labelled as modules, are stacked or aligned to structure modular architecture. All three terms delineate making from ready-to-use components in a scalable manner. Ready-to-use describes making from factory-produced components but can also suggest repurposing modular objects, products or pieces. Modular concrete drainage pipes inspired a group of architects, Summary Studio, to develop an industrialized building strategy based on the arrangement of precast concrete boxes. By examining the detailed assembly of pre-stressed concrete drainpipes to organise sewage system networks, the firm conceived a similar type of sectional modularity to produce houses. 

 

Pre-stressed concrete is cast into prismatic tubes weatherproofed and assembled through watertight connections. Pre-stressed concrete uses tended cables to strengthen concrete by compressing it into shape before loading it. This Gomos system proposes affordable concrete box units that would leave the factory completed and delivered to sites to be set and positioned to form either aligned linear dwelling units or as single-unit micro dwellings. This pipe fitting suggests any number of arrangements as the individual sections could be cast for and linked to any shape. Inhabiting this type of ready-made pipe communicates the concept of modular construction associated with other ready-made strategies such as container architecture clustered to achieve a type of singular grouping.

 

The firm proposed a first prototype, an assembly of six concrete boxes on a sloped site in Vale de Cambria in Portugal. Each unit, 2,5x5,9 m is autonomous and structurally independent from the rest of the assembly. The simple building block inspired system is intended as a low-cost solution to the enduring global housing shortages. Challenging prefab’s connotations, the sectional building units are arrayed in a playful manner to demonstrate a dynamic composition from identical components. The thin shell construction or monococque structural system optimises concrete’s monolithic behaviour and its thermal mass. Reinforced and pre-stressed in the factory the concrete boxes can be fitted and infilled with interior systems to serve any housing needs.

Gomos Building System (inspiration: left; system representation: right)

Prefabrication experiments - 287 - Modular city building - 08 - Made-to-stock «open building»

Modularity relates to the basic definition of systems theory; distinct elements are structured and coordinated in a hierarchal manner to achieve a coherent whole known as a system. A building is made up of multiple systems: structure, envelope, circulation, etc. The dimensional normalization of systems and their composing parts through shared classifications, details, standards and assembly methods makes it possible to imagine diverse and scalable products, buildings or objects based on common systemic rules. Modular platforms, often categorized as industrialized building systems often point to proprietary assemblies, however open modular strategies can be designed to creatively use off the shelf components and conventional building methods. An open-source use of made-to-stock pieces outlines a world of possibilities, making a building or a series of buildings entirely interoperable from core elements. Scaling this type of open methodology even further, the city could be envisioned as a pattern of repeatable but customizable sub-systems.  

A 23 dwelling unit development, in Trignac, France, designed by Pritzker prizewinning architects Lacaton and Vassal in 2010 elegantly uses basic building elements to reconstruct a derelict industrial sector into a burgeoning dynamic neighbourhood for families. An entire urban field was planned within a system of low-cost, made-to-stock elements: steel profiles, cast-in-place bearing elements and concrete hollow-core slabs. The structural system, a straightforward platform frame produces 2 - 4 story buildings that can be expanded horizontally to form larger edifices contingent only to the fire restrictions imposed by their floor areas and exposed steel parts. Devoid of bearing walls, the stacked concrete slabs shape adaptable and flexible floor plates. The buildings are capped with lightweight greenhouses, also built with standard elements. Used to capture and harvest solar gains and help stabilize interior temperatures in different climate conditions, the greenhouses act as an insulating rooftop microclimate. A lightweight curtain wall of polycarbonate panels, hung from the platforms’ perimeter, makes the façades or skins as agile as the floor plans. Elevations can change without affecting structural integrity. This type of made-to-stock, architect driven bricolage (tinkering), is inspired by an industrial vernacular common to modernist architectural exploration looking to reduce costs and develop a type of modular repeatability leveraged for an flexible and open building approach.

A field of modular components