Prefabrication experiments - 495 - Literature fundamentals

 

Along with exhibitions, literature has played an important role in spreading knowledge about prefabrication. The wealth as well as the depth of narratives outlining the many potentials of industrialized construction have and continue to make the case for higher levels of manufacturing integration in construction to ease recurring challenges: labour shortages, lack of specific trades, waste generation, and low productivity levels. Beginning with Albert Farwell Bemis’ The Evolving House, Rational Design published in 1936, identifying rationalization as an advantage of factory production, many have fostered an ever-expanding catalogue of viewpoints with similar undertones across varying eras. 

 

Burnham Kelly’s The Prefabrication of Houses (1951), Maurice Revel’s La prefabrication dans la construction (1966), Barry James Sullivan’s Industrialization in the Building Industry (1980) which includes a foreword by Moshe Safgdie and an introduction by Buckminster Fuller, Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake’s Refabricating Architecture (2004), and Andreas Vogler’s The House as a Product, all contextualize prefab’s links to industrialization, mechanization, and mass production using similar examples and archetypes. 

 

In 2008, related to the renaissance of interest in offsite construction, the well-known German periodical Detail published a comprehensive treatise entitled Components and Systems -  Modular Construction - Design Structures and New Technologies. The 240-page publication, while informative, strays little from others before it by covering the vast history of iconic experiments before going through the potentials of modular prefabrication by analysing contemporary built projects throughout Europe. The basic principles provided by the authors epitomize how little has changed when comparing this publication with Bemis’ discourse from 1936. 

 

The module, the grid, dimensional coordination, geometric positioning, assembly and setting along with transport still define the rigorous design criteria that offsite construction demands. One diagram presented as a design principle depicts the relationship between modules and grids as positioning devices for harmonising building systems is comparable to Bemis’ definition of dimensional coordination. While digital technologies are marginally discussed by Detail’s special edition, many argue that digital tools are providing the long-awaited inflection point for the industry. However forward-looking this may seem, the fundamental ideals in literature regarding offsite can be distilled down to greater dimensional rationalization.

left: Bemis - 1936 ; right: Detail - 2008.