Prefabrication experiments - 408 - Kit-of-parts and Standardization

Jaimie Johnston, Head of Global Systems at Bryden Wood and Design Lead for the Construction Innovation Hub, has spoken enthusiastically about the changes taking place within the construction industry, specifically the shift toward offsite construction. The Bryden Wood approach is articulated to the same kit-of-parts strategy deployed for post-war housing crises but described in contemporary terms.  The current Modern Methods of Construction / Platform construction space, suggested by Johnston and his firm influenced the UK Government’s Construction Playbook, whose core policy «harmonize, digitize and rationalize demand» creates new opportunities to apply a consistent set of technical standards to assets being built across a given sector. This «platform» level of standardization has the capability to streamline design and construction, giving the industry a lever to scale supply. 

 

Johnston defines this standardized, foundational approach as a springboard, setting up the prospect of working with more sophisticated industrialized manufacturing methodologies like DfMA. The idea of standardization is important for achieving economies but should not be an obstacle to architectural innovation. Efficient production applied to building must be done the right way including all stakeholders including the creativity that goes along with architectural design. The standard, normalized, terminology associated with past prefab experiments has long challenged offsite uptake to reform construction.  

 

The kit-of-parts or platform DfMA processes do not refer to the end products (traditional or alternative structures), but rather to the design criteria and choices marking-out building needs. As such, the kit-of-parts methodology does not relate to one strategy either modular or panelized but to a symbiotic use of materials and assemblies to facilitate everything from supply chain management to onsite coordination. Each industrialized construction strategy can be looked at as a tool in the overall construction process adapting to projects, sites, and functional requirements, reforming the «silo» nature of the construction ecosystem; Platforms are toolkits for building singular projects from cooperating sources. Whatever vocabulary is used to portray a novel approach to industrialized construction the underlying benefits of standardization are clear: sharing and defining elemental logistics across multiple projects increases efficiencies at every level.

Modular vehicle platform

Prefabrication experiments - 407 - Incremental Housing

 

Open Building theory encompasses several concepts that mark out a prospective systemic adaptability in a building’s design and production: modular construction details, flexible planning principles and user participation. Founded on the idea that malleable and interoperable systems could evolve readily according to changing needs or requirements during a building's lifespan, the theory recommends fluid or circular processes rather than fixed linear ones. Planning for change in function and lifestyle requires a holistic view of how patterns fluctuate over time. Open building protagonists have developed products, techniques, and methods to mitigate the waste that usually goes along with inevitable change.  

 

Two approaches that are sometimes related to open building and adapting to change are unfinished housing and core-housing which relate to the supply of necessary functional elements around which a more complex system could stem. Both strategies are extracted from understanding that populations might not have the resources or the need to build a complete housing infrastructure from the onset. 

 

Incremental housing, a combination of unfinished and core, has been promoted by Priztker Prize winning architect, Alejandro Aravena in multiple projects as an instruction manual to develop resilient communities from first core-service elements to planning strategies for aggregating all appended spaces over time. A series of predetermined elements (basic needs) designed as linear, radial, or dynamic arrangements outline networks onto which private and individual units can organically take shape matching their community’s evolutions. 

 

Incremental housing also involves indetermined spaces that are added, adapted, constructed, or deconstructed over time. Gradual adaptations link two complementary spaces, a first step core and an adjacent flexible space. From this simple juxtaposition, neighborhoods could expand horizontally or vertically. This core principle has informed many experiments in developing countries where informal or even crisis planning principles sometimes impede the bulk supply and rationalized procurement of edifices. Planning informal, undetermined infrastructure over 5, 10,15 years commands systematic governance where inhabitants are given authority over certain types of changes made to their environment while other modifications are approved by the group. A symbiotic relationship between collective and individual is the most basic criteria of incremental house planning.    

 

Top: Incremental Housing by Elemental
Bottom: Incremental housing principles -
Module https://moduledesign.weebly.com/incremental-housing.html

Prefabrication experiments - 406 - Modular naval construction as a model

Industrialized building / offsite construction protagonists have contemplated successes in bordering industries for inventiveness to increase productivity in construction. Automobile manufacturing served as one of the earliest benchmarks of serial fabrication potentially suitable for architecture. Assembly line principles led to the development of the mobile home and later to more factory intensive building systems, namely heavy precast panels in Germany, France and beyond. Recent digital advances in manufacturing methodologies have reinvigorated the links with car production as an icon of platform thinking, making differentiated products from the same composing parts, underbellies, or chassis. Aeronautics has also been projected onto building production as planes are assembled with large factory-made hunks that are seamlessly integrated according to models, known as digital or fabrication twins. 

 

Perhaps the most compelling comparison is with shipbuilding, as it has evolved into a type of coordinated stacking of big chunks inspiring construction of buildings with similar large-scale factory-finished boxes. An example of multi-trade prefabrication or near-ship prefabrication, parts are fashioned into large blocks which are then assembled as a complete hull. Further, shipbuilding, especially cruise ship building, addresses the same challenges posed by buildings, as they are basically large floating hotels with spaces, functions and even components that collective housing blocks include. 

 

Modularity in shipbuilding is also suggested as a way of reducing costs, delays and waste associated with complete ship overhauls to face changing and evolving needs. As in buildings, ship life spans can be increased substantially by integrating intelligent assembly and disassembly principles to make any modifications or updates simpler. Interoperable components, dimensional coordination, plug and play self-contained boxes and repeatable ship segments that can be used across multiple crafts are all elements that cross the boundary between naval architecture and building design.  Commonalities between ships can be typical galleys, medical facilities, rooms, and service cores that can be designed to fit into multiple ships distributing their planning costs over multiple product lines. This modularity and platform theory applied in naval yards is seen as a strategy to combat premature obsolescence and to harmonize complex supply chains, an estimable model for modular buildings.     

An example of modular ship hull composition

Prefabrication experiments - 405 - Interior Partition Systems

 

Current practices and literature affirm the construction industry’s wastefulness and suggest that adaptability policies, while adopted marginally, can reduce waste during an edifice’s lifespan. Walls and partitions are still fashioned with plasterboard to be surfaced with joint compound and then painted. Conventional methods impede any changes over time without messy demolition. Streamlined construction has resisted the potentials of simple dry reversible connections and components. Designed-in malleability could make an important contribution to buildings’ interior systems evolution. 

 

Buildings functional evolution over time, constantly requires some wall relocation or reorganization. These reworkings fill dumps as internal rearranging of service spaces can occur every 10-15 years, sometimes even more frequently.  Programming or including dry construction / reversible assemblies in wall erection reduces required demolition, new resource harvesting and material refuse.

 

This is not a new idea. In the early 1970s Nijhuis Bouw BV a Dutch builder proposed a manufactured partition system: the 4 dee Inbouw. The wall kits included all framing, floor sills, top plates, and variable infill opaque or transparent patterns. All system elements adhered to a modular grid of 30cm with two height options, 2,4 or 2,6 m. A basic 1,2m wide panel, composed of 4 grid modules, slid into removable floor, and ceiling channels, making the system fully relocatable. Suggesting a more circular approach to construction, impermanent partition systems can reduce a building’s environmental footprint as materials can be recovered and employed over multiple life cycles reforming the extract, use, dispose methodology that characterizes modern construction. 

 

DIRTT is a Canadian company commercializing the same type of panelized wall kit to facilitate long term flexibility. The multi-trade interior construction system is related to Nijhuis' system, components for framing are dry assembled and can be as easily disassembled as they are assembled. DIRTT takes the idea one step further in panel customization:  A vast cloud catalogue of materials and finishes make the system fully mass customizable using the company's planning software to streamline the planning, fabrication, delivery, and assembly process.

Left: 4 Dee Inbouw system; Right: DIRTT's multi-trade interior construction system