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)