Manifestoes claiming how offsite construction can inflect productivity and reform construction from site intensive to factory-intensive processes have been written and often reflect different eras’ crises or technological advances, and sometimes both. Henry Ford's assembly line, Toyota's principles of no waste manufacturing, and today’s digital platform giants have all influenced offsite theory and narratives. Progressing from mass production to mass customization and influenced by the post-war building booms offsite construction literature framed and advocated for a better understanding of the rationalized application of manufacturing methodologies in architecture.
Well known for their prototypes, the Loblolly House built overlooking the Chesapeake Bay and the Cellulose House presented at the MoMA exhibit Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, the team of Kieran and Timberlake penned what is arguably one of the most important statements on prefab theory in the last 20 years, redirecting the discussion toward neoteric analogies for architecture's production. Proposing a narrative based on digital manufacturing methods Refabricating Achitecture compares two historic figures central to construction culture, the « master builder », with the highly specialized contemporary « master assembler » of components. The authors highlight a missing link between these two disciplinary approaches - one defined by a highly integrated process versus the other by a fragmented one.
Elucidating examples of complex industrial objects, planes, automobiles and naval yard management methods the architects portray an architecture potentially assembled from integrated factory-made chunks designed and manufactured to facilitate onsite coordination in favor of greater predictability. These building chunks (modules) are modular sub-assemblies that can include many subsystems completed in a quality-controlled environment to avoid the wasteful entanglement of conventional construction.
Explored in both their prototypes and their practice, the authors present a systemic model of three interrelated offsite approaches for structure, skin and service cartridges or cores harmonized in a digital environment to virtually build and coordinate all elements before their fabrication. All components can then be optimally bundled for on-site delivery and sequenced to simplify their setting. The model argues for a new type of master designer/fabricator/manager to bridge design and construction. A veritable «how-to» of DfMA, Refabricating Architecture is one of the strongest expressions of a required paradigm shift in construction in the 20th and 21st centuries combined.
master builder versus master assembler - Refabricating Architecture (2004)
No comments:
Post a Comment