Prefabrication experiments - 524 - Modlines

 

Completed to high levels in a factory, incorporating the most refined details and according to rigorous quality control measures, modular volumetric boxes are shrink wrapped to protect them during transport and carried on flatbeds to construction sites as giant building blocks. The design-to-delivery process is meticulously planned down to the required staging areas where the convoy’s just-in-time sequence is orchestrated for the boxes to be craned and set into position. Spreader beams carried by cranes provide an augmented lifting surface to account for the width of the volumes to be set.  Faces are juxtaposed and stacked to form what are referred to as matelines (where modules meet or mate) or modlines in volumetric construction. Matelines usually refer to joints or segments where panels meet in planar building systems whereas modlines delineate the gridlines associated with volume edges.

 

Modules are typically stacked with one box’s roof constituting the drop ceiling of a flat or room while the next box's floor structure is strapped and bolted to the previously set volume forming a discrete ceiling and floor connection. A vertical sequence of two boxes in width is piled up to the roof, before going on to the next series. This vertical sequence ensures that roofing is quickly installed to protect volumes during construction as manufactured boxes are delivered without permanent weather protection. 

 

Once set in place, mechanical, electrical and other systemic connections proceed. Systems are either capped off or modularized to facilitate on-site coordination. Access hatches, traps or other facilitating devices are incorporated to be finalized on site. When exterior cladding is installed off site, perimeter edge strips are left unfinished to be weatherproofed, insulated and covered. This approach exposes the modline grid on the finished building. Another strategy is to transport incomplete boxes where weatherproofing and cladding is contracted and completed on site dissimulating modlines behind a continuous cladding to resemble a conventional build. The standalone nature of the stacked factory-made boxes comes with a certain degree of material redundancy (double structure for floor and roof compositions), however this redundancy, when detailed properly, can lead to much greater acoustic performance as compared with conventional builds where two stacked flats share a single floor composition.

Setting of factory-made volumes