Prefabrication experiments - 411 - XS (dwellings) - Sanyo Living Pod

 

Extra-small housing encompasses any dwelling that is small enough to be labelled as a tiny house or a micro dwelling, usually between 10 to 40 m², roughly the size of one or two rooms. XS housing archetypes can be set up as single family or multifamily dwellings when aggregated as kernels in patterns highlighted by Japanese Metabolist architecture. Geared for mobility, they abrogate permanent anchoring associated with conventional housing construction. Micro-dwellings can be both self-propelled and hitched. Today’s comprehensively commodified culture associated with intelligent connected objects has renewed interest for integrated capsule dwellings ready for purchase and delivery. 

 

Notwithstanding current interest in tiny homes, Capsules are a product of modernist design principles. The machine for living evolved into the optimistic and space age architectural imagery diffused post-World War 2. Not exclusive to Japan's design culture, capsules were however propagandized during the Expo70 international World Fair presented in Osaka, Japan under the planning authority of Metabolist architect Kenzō Tange.  The exhibit theme «Progress and Harmony of Mankind» underlined the high-tech culture fostered through Japan's major support of automation and manufacturing methodologies applied to housing production. Japan’s prefab housing industry progressed and exalted prefab capsules as a serialized product incorporating technological advancements. 

 

Case in Point, Sanyo, an electronics producer showcased their living pod during Expo70. The micro-unit suggested a future of technological integration in every part of our homes with electronic baths, television sets and mobile communications. The Sanyo Living Capsule, a spherical individually sized biosphere, also labelled as the Health Capsule, synthesized every living function in one extra-small ergonomic form. Perfected living conditions, light, atmosphere, heat, and ventilation were automatically controlled and would remain at monitored levels. Mass-manufacturable, they could be adapted for any collective support structure. 

 

The recent demolition of the Nagakin Capsule Tower stipulated a pragmatic end to the capsule culture associated with 1970s Japan. Still, the XS housing pod continues to be linked to prefabrication. Its diminutive size agues for and makes it feasible to control and finish work in a factory setting leaving minimal disturbance and simplified infrastructure connections to the job site. 

Sanyo Living Pod placed within a housing typological matrix

Prefabrication experiments - 410 - Modern Modular : Housing and Offsite Construction 4.0

The association of housing supply with offsite construction has been described as a union of reason. Notwithstanding prefab's potential considering the high levels of repeatability, the industry is still characterized by one-off projects - prototypes - even though details, components, arrangements, and materials affirm consistency. For varied scopes and scales the argument in favour of offsite is increased affordability, sustainability, productivity, and quality through systematized processes. Current design digitalization supplemented by democratized digital fabrication technologies suggest possibilities for outlining parametric cataloguing and modelling of housing systems outlined by reproducible configurations. 

 

Resolution 4 Architecture's «modern modular» approach examines these potential links between architectural housing arrangements and modular volumetric building dimensional criteria. While their mass-customizable schemes expose the idealized perfect storm driving current offsite constructions uptake, prefabrication and housing have been similarly federated before. From a precisely modern perspective, diverse housing typologies were devised to organize prefabrication's theories to address past housing crises. The mobile home, Levittown bungalows, Metabolist capsules and most notably the slab panel block, pointed to mass-manufacturing to simplify supply of affordable dwellings. These proposals were developed for two urban forms: suburbanization valued the bungalow's seriality and ambitious postwar urban renewal guided the development of the panelized block. The entire spectrum between individual and collective was explored by architects or inventors to reform housing from vernacular construction to standardized processes citing the advantages industrialization brought to other consumer goods. 

 

Resolution 4 Architecture's exploration renews these patterns by providing a glimpse into how contemporary digitalization can inform a conceptual framework for housing. The catalogue of modules contains basic «manufacturable» fragments for users to customize their own home as one would aggregate building blocks, composing a home from predetermined integrated chunks. As manufacturing in architecture can be linked to both Ford's assembly line (component catalogues) and Toyota's production system (lean construction), the current era of smart technologies is propelling a new generation of prefab ideas. Open-source software development theories have already spawned prototypes like the Wikihouse and other digitally conceived catalogues that pursue the enduring objective of reasoning architecture through generative tessellations.

Typological matrix by Resolution 4 Architecture https://www.re4a.com/the-modern-modular

Prefabrication experiments - 409 - Housing affordability through prefab ?

Prefabrication, offsite construction, and industrialized building systems are high on everyone's agenda for tackling affordability in housing. In print, on the web or even on the evening news, age-old strategies are being discussed to address systemic issues augmenting the present crisis' increasing acuteness. From catalogues of pre-approved designs to standardized dwelling blocks, policy makers are scrambling to increase supply as construction costs keep rising. Prefabrication is being promoted as a way of reducing timelines and costs up to 50%; Suggesting unrealistic promises based on reduced planning as projects will be repeated from site to site with little variations. This idealized view of prefabrication is how the unfavorable preconceptions toward industrialized construction evolved: shoddy cookie-cutter models produced quickly and cheaply often also implying weaker designs. The truth is, when done well, prefabrication can be beautiful and contribute to a setting’s heritage along with optimizing both costs and schedules. Seriality or even standardization do not imply banality; Good design can be produced for the masses.

 

Certain elements can certainly be repeated from project to project; however, architecture is anchored to a particular place that implies detailed planning to respond to zoning, climate, structural criteria, or material restrictions. These conditions enumerate a few site-specific elements that can’t be standardized. 

 

So, can prefabrication contribute to addressing the housing crisis? Guidelines should consider holistic and integrated supply chains with stakeholders, from manufacturers to professionals discussing potentials honestly without the need to promote or demote offsite with outdated attitudes or untenable promises. Prefabrication and offsite can be an important component in reducing waste while controlling quality. Adapting manufacturing methods to make building parts is already used in the industry for all disparate components needed to assemble a building. A breakthrough would offer complete subassemblies that reduce on site labor to a minimum and standardize shared processes through developing patterns for customizable designs. 

 

In similar times of crisis, architects imagined factory production as a tool for increasing production capacity. The next blog posts will share some housing proposals according to their scale and relative success in applying mass production strategies to the architecture of dwellings. 

Mass produced components for a Levittown bungalow