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