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