Prefabrication experiments - 385 - Global evolutions - 05 - UK

 

Conservatory builder Joseph Paxton’s experimentation with prefab elements to assemble the Crystal Palace for London’s world exposition (1851), Henry Clayton’s brick making machine for Atlas Brickwork (1855), and exporting rolled corrugated iron kit houses to various British colonies, Great Britain, the birthplace of industrialization developed first manifestations of manufacturing harnessed for building construction.  With the success of mass production and commodification, it’s astonishing that conventional construction has not implemented higher levels of prefabrication. Housing shortages, post war rebuilding and redirecting war economies towards construction drove prefabrication between and after the two world wars. Innumerable prefabs were commanded in the years following World War II. Much has been written about these explorations and their non-traditional construction methods.  Like housing, school construction to serve burgeoning communities was also identified as an outlet for British prefab systems. Suspect detailing, lack of weatherproofing with porous envelopes deepened prefabrications’ enduring negative connotations. Only about 7% of new homes use comprehensive modular or industrialized building systems. Schools and houses are once again a priority for increasing construction’s productivity as the affordable housing crisis is a global challenge requiring heroic approaches.

 

The UK has remained a figurehead for prefab’s theorization even with marginal practical applications of modern construction methods. Bryden Wood’s Bridging the Gap between Manufacturing and Construction published in 2017 established the firm and the UK as contemporary trendsetters redirecting effective manufacturing concepts such as Design for Manufacturing and Assembly towards building processes.  The firm explored platform theory’s potential to cross-pollinate building types, their assembly details and mass manufacturing with supply chains by comprehensive centralized data management to streamline design, fabrication, assembly and building operation. This construction 4.0 take on renewing prefab is driving a veritable industrialized building renaissance.  A sign of current attention to the UK’s market, after 60 years in the Japanese sector, Sekisui prefab homebuilder has introduced Shawood, a skeletal timber version of their housing system designed specifically for the UK. Partnering with Urban Splash’s modular housing division, Sekisui’s enduring chassis model was directly in line with platform, modularity and customization concepts more than half a century before Bryden Wood’s manifesto.  

Crystal Palace (left) ; Bryden Wood's systematization (middle); Shawood detail (right)

Prefabrication experiments - 384 - Global evolutions - 04 - USA

 

Constructing a prosperous nation during the industrial revolution framed the United States’ normalized building culture centered around specialized trades, abundant resources and archetypal construction systems. Steel skeletal frames and light wood timber balloon frames were the building blocks of territorial and economic development; Steel for the vertical dense city and timber for horizontally sprawling suburbanization. Henry Ford's assembly line inspired an ideal relationship between mechanization and mass production through the systemic categorization of building products.  Bespoke buildings produced artisanally were replaced by the detailed assembly of manufactured pieces leveraging high levels of repetition in design, supply chains and management processes. 

 

The union of American pioneer spirit and the democratization of the assembly line as a way forward led to the development of the iconic mobile home. Its affordability and simple untethered purchasing process made this industrial artefact highly successful, and it has remained the most applied form of factory-made housing. The United States was also the stage for the twentieth century’s most ambitious building program; HUD’s Operation Breakthrough in 1969 subsidized experimentation and production capacity to test industrialized construction for multi-unit urban residential buildings. The program led to 11 test sites demonstrating the application of affordable mass housing prototypes that were never generalized.  

 

Even with all its rich history of offsite construction, market share of new housing starts is marginal but being driven by a resurgence of similar challenges that drove previous uptake initiatives: affordable housing shortages, limited specialized labor, rising costs, stagnating productivity in construction, and environmental constraints. Articulated to these contemporary needs, HUD is once again underwriting research to normalize and organize prefab potentials. The market is saturated by small companies and stacking volumetric units made by mobile home producers are explored as prospective collective housing methodologies. Larger Flagships like Z modular, Blokable, VBC and to a certain extent Katerra (now defunct) are using information technologies to transform design and building approaches. Integrating BIM and other supply chain management tools offer comprehensive solutions to assemble factory made boxes designed and produced specifically for high density residential, institutional, or commercial purposes.  The industry is set to grow quickly, and prefab's connotations are being reformed in favor of a modular building sector that is innovative, proactive, efficient, high quality and fully customizable.

From left to right : Rollohome mobile home, New Jersey test site (Descon / Concordia), Z modular's open volumetric building system

Prefabrication experiments - 383 - Global evolutions - 03 - Australia

 

Australia has a rich history of prefabrication. During the mid-nineteenth century gold rush, massive prospecting migrations framed a fertile environment for the delivery of moveable houses to set up temporary barracks and communities. Corrugated iron houses dispatched from Great Britain are the most notorious and the rolled iron sheet metal became a form of industrial vernacular in Australian modern architecture. Notwithstanding some of these emblematic traditions, prefab is still marginally applied in Australia with only about 3% of new construction deploying industrialized construction systems. With contemporary needs and challenges driven by ecological constraints along with increasing urban populations, Australia like other industrialized countries is directing policy and industry stimulating a renewed interest in offsite construction: achieving more, wasting less in a quality controlled environment. Further, inflation and a dearth of traditional trades have increased construction costs and made housing affordability a major obstacle. 

 

Pushed by lobby groups, the centralized hub of all things prefab in Australia, prefabAUS https://www.prefabaus.org.auis educating consumers, and government housing provision stakeholders towards greater knowledge sharing regarding potential systems and the advantages of prefabrication to reach a 10% market share; a 7% uptake that will require an concerted effort form all concerned parties. Modular volumetric, in particular, is being touted as a way forward for the Australian offsite construction sector. From completed flats, to utility rooms and bathroom pods, factory produced boxes intelligently assembled make quick work of any building type as they can be completed up to 70% offsite. Smart Base^TM and Fast Hook^TM strategies marketed by pod manufacturer Pacific Australia are showcasing how modern methods of construction can transform production from intensive site based management to efficient manufacturing methodologies. Austruss, Buildom, Dynamic Pods, Hutchinson Builders, Interpod, Platinum Pacific Australia, Podium Pods, Puda, Schiavello and Sync (Hickory Group) are companies supplying this type of functional unit in glass reinforced plastics, steel or reinforced concrete. Consolidating market forces is one of PrefabAUS’s greatest potential strengths and cross-pollinating industrial partners leads to a mature market place ensuring that a 7 % market growth doesn’t lead to another era of connoted prefabs but a robust alternative to onsite archaic practices.

From Iron Houses to Modern Methods of Construction