The marginal application of comprehensive factory-assembled and industrialized building systems has taught us that while mass production increased efficiencies in other commercial sectors, architecture and construction's resistance has been bogged down by values based on artisanal singularity. These fragmented processes have led to the making of unique, original, and beautiful public buildings and should be valued for this - even with all the underlying challenges. However, when it comes to building types that are highly repetitive - collective housing blocks, primary schools, and light commercial properties - it would make sense to harness some of the economies that come with mass manufacturing ecosystems.
Harmonized supply chains, bulk material orders, systematized management, pre-assembly in a controlled environment, and reduced waste are just some of the elements that could help rationalize a well-conceived manufacturing-to-building process. Further, current digitally integrated value propositions are evolving from repetition toward variable organizations generated from a set of predefined parameters. Certainly not new in the industrialized construction space, modular volumetric manufacturers are endeavouring to espouse a customizable stream based on skeletal or stick-framed prisms directed toward a large number of potential configurations. The configured/engineered-to-order production methodology is reforming the manufactured house on a steel chassis model defined by predetermined designs that came to symbolize factory housing.
Architects can work closely with manufacturers to personalize designs fitted to modules’ strict dimensional criteria and a company's standards. Balconies, hallways, and any other type of required space can be built into the overall dimensions, put together in the factory, delivered and set on or attached to adjoining modules. Completed to a high degree indoors, on-site work could conceivably be limited to infrastructure and mechanical connections. Modular volumetric companies, for the most part, follow a vertically integrated production model. Volumes are pre-assembled according to a network of suppliers from raw components to complex sub-assemblies. Windows, doors, flooring and all other required parts are purchased in bulk, organized and sequenced in the factory with assembly line precision. This integrated purchasing to production process replicates just-in-time production framed by increased agility to respond to client demands.
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| Z-modular steel framed modular platform |
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