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from manufacturers to professionals discussing potentials honestly without the need to promote or demote offsite with outdated attitudes or untenable promises.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