Prefabrication experiments - 392 - customize - 03 - Plug-in dwellings

 

When it comes to prefabrication and industrialized building systems, it seems everything old becomes new again. Ideas from the past get fresh imagery and are wrapped up in an era’s vocabulary to argue for innovation in architecture and construction. Adaptability is one of these reemerging concepts that entices architects to envision ways of making edifices flexible enough to respond to both minor organizational changes and major modifications required for retrofitting according to evolving requirements. The plug-in rhetoric of Metabolist architects in post war Japan posited capsule living as the future of adaptability. Inhabitable manufactured pods would simply be attached or plugged into a collective infrastructure. These functional commodities could either be moved, replaced, or altered over time. Architecture was viewed as peripatetic.

 

Kisho Kurokwa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower epitomized this concept for generations of architects. Ultimately, it proved marginal and ephemeral with the building coming down in April of 2022. Still, the plug-in concept captivates architectural education and design strategies. Peoples Architecture Office of China has renewed these strategies on recent projects including their plug-in school and plug-in tower. The Plug-in Tower closely mimics the systemic separation of support services from their appended mass-produced dwelling pods. The mega spaceframe structure, an oversized version of the famous Mero^TM space frame node, is intended as an adaptable framework espousing any site; the office’s proprietary plug-in panelized sub-assemblies compose prismatic inhabitable spaces within the steel web. The factory-made panel is described as including all mechanical necessities along with interior and exterior finished surfaces. Other functional systems and circulation elements are added-on to create a total comprehensive building.  

 

The prototype is represented as a single-family dwelling without permanent foundations as the steel trellis structure can be anchored to any site; the plug-in dwellers could disassemble the house and take it with them wherever they decide to live. Further, the space frame structure can grow vertically and horizontally adapting to suit changing requirements. A contemporary version of ideas explored during the latter half of the twentieth century, the romanticized mobility and architectural interchangeability reveal more about the theoretical artefacts produced by the profession than it does about tangible applicable adaptability for housing. 

Plug-in prototype from Peoples Architecture Office

Prefabrication experiments - 391 - customize - 02 - Assembly OSM

 

Founded in 2019 by brothers William and Chris Sharples of SHoP architects, Assembly OSM is a start-up intended to revolutionize the way buildings are put together. The architects’ digital design practise, established in 1996, inspired the firm’s founders through several large-scale urban prototypes to expand their digital principles to the entire construction process. Like the now defunct Katerra before it and a growing list of other ventures into digitally propelled industrialization that would bring manufacturing methodologies to streamlined construction, will Assembly OSM finally bridge the enduring gap between architecture and industrialization? The team is certainly accomplished and leveraging what they’ve learned on several modular projects, Barclay tower in New York is the most famous, may qualify them to achieve what so many others have only proposed. 

 

Automobile production has long been a reference to modernize building and improve stagnating construction productivity. Kieran and Timberlake’s manifesto (Refabricating Architecture) in 2004 shifted the narrative to include airplane production and shipbuilding with complexities which more adequately reflect the systemic organisation of buildings. Assembly OSM’s discourse parallels these ideas and platform theory proposed in 2017 by Bryden Wood. These theoretical outlooks point to a type of mega kit method for making multiple bespoke buildings from the same basic parts.  This is not necessarily a new idea; buildings are always made from the same components from doors to windows and a multitude of other industrialized components.  Endeavours like Assembly OSM strive to streamline design with production through the normalization of parts in matters of dimensions, characteristics, and performance, to address the entangled mess of a highly fragmented building construction sector. 

 

Creating a harmonized procurement, planning and coordination process replicated from project to project is the way forward for Assembly OSM inspired by an integrated design and production process that exists in industrial fabrication. In construction, the IPD integrated project delivery method invokes a similar framework for sharing responsibility among stakeholders and laying out every part of the process before it is undertaken. Groups like Assembly OSM, Bryden Wood, Factory OS are promoting this approach, and while digital innovations hold new potentials, the question of - will this be the one ? -  persists.

Left: 290 Mulberry Street (2008); Center: Barclay's B2 Tower (2016); Right: Assembly OSM value proposition

Prefabrication experiments - 390 - customize - 01 - Renzo Piano's «Platform» approach at Corciano

 

After more than a century of consideration and marginal application of manufacturing principles in architecture, the chief sticky point endures: combining efficient, normalized and reproducible processes to a plurality of arrangements without compromising architectural uniqueness. Offsite construction entails many forms of standardization: from harmonizing supply chains to regulating dimensions for components or systems to amortize and distribute costs over multiple objects. Although variations are possible, normalization is key to economic viability. Component based systems, generic kits-of-parts have been proposed to bridge the need for well-ordered parameters with customization. Bryden Wood's platform DfMA approach proposed the implementation of a steel skeletal framework with specialized connectors to create open frames «hosting or accommodating» variable functional requirements articulated to quantified typological criteria. This type of idea, while certainly flexible, still demarcates architectural compositions, replicating syntax from project to project, limiting architecture’s habitual ambitious singularity.

 

Renzo Piano's Rigo Quarter Corciano, an «evolutive» housing system constructed in Perugia, Italy in 1978, foreshadowed Byden Wood’s «platform» approach long before the term was employed in relation to construction. The design and completion process proposed a coordinated steel frame structure arranging linear dwelling cells divided by concrete partitions. Joists, girders, columns, precast concrete panels, and a plug-and-play curtain wall were the scheme’s main components.   Interiors were generic spaces planned according to inhabitants’ needs. Coloured curtain wall panels composed varied elevations to differentiate neighbouring units. These dimensionally normalized curtain wall façades enclosed the flats’ view-oriented elevation while retaining walls anchored the units’ slope-side ends. The kit ideology orchestrated the building and its sitework as an evolving assembly line. All phases were sequenced with an optimized just-in-time production strategy. Prefabricated service cores or pods provided dwelling services within the flats. 

 

This type of «kit» duality (a mass produced kit uniquely disposed over multiple designs) was specifically rationalized for affordable dwellings and could be adapted to any site. From Gropius' expandable house to Piano's robust process at Corciano and even Bryden Wood's optimistic understanding of innumerable variations from standardized parts, the industrialised repetition is still seen by some, certainly by many architects, as perpetuating the sameness that epitomized prefabrication failures.

Left: Platform approach (Bryden Wood); Right: Housing Project at Corciano Courtesy of Fondazione Renzo Piano

Prefabrication experiments - 389 - Global evolutions - 09 - Germany

 

In the years following the first world war right up until the 1960s, German housing policy deployed prefabrication of reinforced concrete elements to develop low-cost experimental communities (Seidlungs) to test prototypes of modern design and production. A notable example of the centralized strategy, Ernst May's precast slab housing brigade, conceived the «plattenbau»: a large panel standardized, highly replicable system for dwelling provision. 

 

The deep-seated manufacturing culture transformed design education as well. The Bauhaus, Germany’s comprehensive design school headed by Walter Gropius, inspired many young practitioners and artisans to look to industry to reform existing production patterns to shape a fresh aesthetic palette for architecture. The relationship between industrialization and architecture is arguably the most symbiotic when compared to other industrialized nations.  Major players like Christoph and Unmack or Hanse Haus, have been producing precise timber structures for more than a century.

Prefab market share is around 23% of new housing starts, a staggering 1 out of every four. The panelized timber kit is driving a turnkey model with a one stop shop convenience, which is also anchored to holistic sustainability markers. With high social acceptability, prefab in Germany symbolizes precise fabrication, high quality design, advanced production methods, valued materials, and efficient construction.  Brand equity positions prefab zeitgeist on par with industries like German automobile fabricators, Volkswagen or BMW.  Even with the mature market, the industry is fragmented. Five top producers account for 30% of production with the remaining 70% being shared among companies holding 3% of the market. 

HAAS Fertigbau’s kits exemplify the most generalized strategy providing services to design and manufacture timber panel kits according to consumer specifications. The company promotes efficacy, tightly finished shells and energy savings. Another well-known producer, Weberhaus promotes similar construction methods and parameters to achieve a high-performance wall envelope within a conventional stick frame structure. The stud cavity is insulated and a continuous layer of insulation over the skeleton eliminates any thermal bridging. Along with some of the most advanced factory mechanisation and robotization, assembling these kits is material, time and cost efficient. The panels can be flatpacked for optimized just-in-time transport and sequenced for streamlined onsite assembly.

Christoph & Unmack portable buildings (left); Advanced prefab manufacturing (right)