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