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