Prefabrication experiments - 336 - U-build

 

Self-build formulas and systems are an integral part of prefabrication history. Moreover, architects and architectural academia have always been fascinated with the design and knowledge sharing potential of generating bespoke houses or buildings from elegantly thought-out kits. Ken Isaacs (Living Structures Matrix, 1954) and Walter Segal (The Self-build method, 1962) explored the D-I-Y theme with the publication of prescriptions and platform systems elucidating the construction of inhabitable objects, houses or furniture from the same modular components. Construction education, the inspiration for the proposals countered industrialization’s hyper-specialization considered as a factor distancing individuals from the social act of home building.  The user, builder or dweller should, with minimal know-how, be directed step by step in the construction process. Democratization of digital fabrication tools is generating a fertile environment for people to get involved with their material culture and built environment. Alastair Parvin’s (Wikihouse, 2011) is a notable example reviving similar attitudes to what Segal and Isaacs proposed federated by current hacker and open-source strategies for leveraging social building knowledge.

 

A recent project established on similar values, U-Build, developed by architectural firm Studio Bark (https://u-build.org) along with structural engineers Structure Workshop proposes a simple flat pack building system for creating a large variety of small housing structures, micro-dwellings or accessory dwelling units. Cut plywood sheets are assembled into prisms, boxes or ribbed surfaces that fit together to shape walls, floors and roofs. Analogous to cinder block construction, the open timber cases are dry stacked and fixed with bolts to form a rigid wall.  The 19mm spruce or birch plywood sheets are divided and cut numerically with a CNC machine into faces fitted with box joints and glued to form the basic units; a five-faced rectangular prism. The timber structure can be insulated and clad in a variety of materials. The modular boxes shape a cavity wall where the case sides are aligned vertically and horizontally to form studs and girts. Wing-nuts and bolts placed in predrilled holes in the case’s perimeter faces hold the structure together. Anchored to concrete foundations or placed over any other stable base material, the structural system is an example of ribbed waffle slab construction applied to wall, floor and roof construction. 

U-build method, from https://u-build.org