Prefabrication experiments - 354 - Gablok building system

 

Building with blocks is equally representative of ancient and present-day construction culture and has been outlined by master-masons as well as do-it-yourselfers. Amassing units that interlock or are bound together characterizes a modular adaptability associated with bricklaying. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Textile Blocks, modern cinder blocks and even mass timber logs have been proposed to be juxtaposed, aligned, stacked, and interlaced into innumerable brickwork patterns. While most masonry systems require some form of fixing or binding agent to hold elements together, dry assembly, like tongue and groove or knob and tube strategies has been envisioned to integrate intelligible strengthening details to further streamline construction.  

 

Inventor Gabriel Lakatos of Belgium received a patent (2018) for the composite timber-insulation Gablok building system. The basic pieces combine OSB (Oriented Strand Board) perimeter panels with an insulating core to form a thick, high thermal performance block (around R-30). The external boards shape a modular timber cells. The insulating core fills and adheres to the box. The core is shaped and raised over the timber faces to form two knobs (square-based prism outcrops). The insulation is indented below the cell to create corresponding voids (square tubes or dimples). The square knob and tube indicate a type of mortise and tenon connection.  The blocks can simply be stacked with the extending mass filling the void in the same fashion that toy blocks interconnect. The modular 290mm x 290mm insulated boxes compose a stressed skin wall, a sandwich wall system, that is both strong and airtight, equivalent to a site-assembled Structural insulated Panel (SIP). Large factory produced SIPS usually require more complex transport and some type of lifting mechanism on site for the panels, which would become quite heavy at a thickness of 290mm. Gablok breaks the same wall into manageable pieces. 

 

Conventional construction techniques can be used to complete exterior and interior systems over the blocks. Along with the wall elements, the system is completed with floor joist and beam elements that interlock in the same way. Geared to self-builders, it is possible to introduce elements to integrate other building components such as wiring, ducting and plumbing. 

Gablok interlocking building elements