Prefabrication experiments - 461 - Miracle Truss

Designing coverings, bridges or other large spanning structures is central to both structural engineering and architectural conceptions. Industrialization and its application in building construction drove the development of many material and compositional innovations. Trusses in steel, concrete and even in timber highlighted the relation between spans and material distribution defining efficient geometries by precisely placing material to resist loads within its effective strain limits. Beam effect underscores these assemblies by modern engineers who fashioned trusses in every scope and scale to respond to the new architectural demands of the machine age; train stations, airports, ports, bridges, all implied optimally spanning space utilizing minimal material with maximum structural performance.

 

Combining the efficiency of trusses with the form resistance of compressive structures, like vaults, A-frames or Butler frames, the Miracle Truss Buildings company supplies a kit-of-parts truss for cruck-framing small buildings. The basic unit, a modern archetype, a Butler type portico frame is assembled from four onsite bolted components delivered separately to maximize transport capacities. The frames are adaptable to industrial as well as residential requirements. Leveraging the success of large metal buildings, pre-engineered-to-order according to site and contextual criteria, the Miracle Truss building can be designed using an on-line configurator aligned with its fabrication and supply chain logistics.

 

Bolted to standard strip foundations, the linear arrangement’s length is boundless with both gable ends free of any structural constraints. Each composing part, vertical elements and oblique rafters, is profiled according to lines of stress. A rigid frame in cross section, simple tension braces stabilize the frames laterally. Steel angles fixed to the trusses make it a simple task to add timber purlins to construct discrete envelope systems. This complete separation of structure and skin also leads to the structure’s potential disassembly and reassembly multiplying potential service lives optimizing resource use and reducing total carbon footprint of the steel's initial production. A multifunctional framing platform, the Miracle Truss reinterprets the modern ideal of truss effect and providing off the shelf building kits readily available for any context.

Miracle Truss building during construction

 

 

Prefabrication experiments - 460 - Notes in passing - 05 - Platforms for Life Timber Kit-of-Parts

 

The affordable housing crisis affecting many is pressing stakeholders to assess the lagging productivity of conventional construction. For building new dwellings or for retrofitting aging 20th century building stocks, traditional trades and procedures lack the required swiftness, optimized resource management and takt times that the present state of housing development economics requires.  Planning, permitting, financing, approvals and contracting are all time-consuming stages that can be facilitated by kit or platform approaches. Using predetermined processes, components and parts outlined to streamline procurement increases production capacity aligned with offsite construction potentials.

 

The Platforms for Life design system initiated by the Intelligent City project https://intelligent-city.com/urban-housing-product/ proposes a comprehensive building system that uses mass timber components in rationalized, standardized, modular and flexible configurations adapted and modelled for any site. Articulated to optimized spans in relation to flat dimensions, the online metrics configurator expedites preliminary feasibility studies that encompass all project criteria; ready-to-go from the initial planning meetings. The manufacturable parts facilitate everything from gaining city approvals to architectural detailing as projects repeat identical chunks, stitching and joinery. Each site-specific project is distilled as a digital twin integrating the design, fabrication, assembly and construction processes through BIM software.

 

Iterative studies are adjusted and tweaked in real time without losing their integrated manufacturability as grid-based aggregations all deploy the system's underlying DNA. Once confirmed, the parametric models include capacities for detailed design or even analysis. A prime example of digital based integration of the design and construction processes, each building is devised with the same parts, then sequenced and delivered to the construction site to facilitate assembly. The nimble industrialized building system includes criteria for reducing energy consumption, span optimization and topological diversity. This type of union between design, fabrication, assembly and adaptable just-in-time delivery exemplifies how DFMA and offsite construction are leveraged to respond to high demand by organizing a supply chain of stakeholders, professionals and products through centralized design devices harmonizing normalized hardware and software components.

Platforms for Life artist rendering

Prefabrication experiments - 459 - Notes in passing - 04 - LEGO® blocks as an example of platform theory

 

Platform theory and its relevance for building construction has been suggested as potentially harmonizing design variables with fabrication, construction and furthermore to facilitate a circular approach in construction as pieces used for multiple buildings would be designed as modular and interoperable. Hardware commonalities exist in construction as steel buildings, prefab concrete components, and a myriad of other assemblies are normalized to be used across diverse organizations using repeating parameters within singular designs. Using platforms for building construction is often compared to the automobile industry: cooperating manufacturers share dimensional and material components of their products’ underbellies. An equally interesting analogy to platform theory directed to making is LEGO® plastic toy brick variability; standardized toy blocks are dimensionally compatible, can be clicked and composed into an infinite number of designs.

 

Since the late 1970s and the LEGO®  patent’s expiry, the same type of toy brick expanded commercially where other companies, Mould King, Sembo, Cobi produce compatible products. The toy bricks have expanded to include software platforms developed to create and virtually construct a LEGO®  model, visualize its completion, categorize its required components and potentially even create a purchase order or a bill of materials that is coordinated with producers – an idealize vision of applying DfMA in architecture. 

 

LEGO® Digital Designer, Mecabricks, and BrickLink studio are three configurators that offer users similar capacities to test their designs and share them with an online community of plastic brick architecture designers. Linked to online sharing sites, these configurators, a type of LEGO®  Information Modeling, communicate modular coordination principles, automate take-offs, facilitate cloud sharing and distribution. On-line communities also use these platforms to buy and sell, new, repurposed, or vintage pieces that multiply design potentials. 

 

This approach to crowd sharing and interoperability could be directed toward building design and fabrication. A configurator for personalized designs from a catalogue of interchangeable pieces based on bulk purchasing, automated estimating, working drawing packages and shop drawings frame a formidable strategy from which users create buildings of any scope and scale from a regulated and categorized number of predetermined subassemblies.

LEGO® blocks