Prefabrication experiments - 100 - 96 000 units per day – «a standard of living package» ?

«Rapid urbanization places remarkable strain on housing and serviced land. By 2030, about 3 billion people, or about 40 percent of the world’s population, will need proper housing and access to basic infrastructure and services such as water and sanitation systems. This translates into the need to complete 96 150 housing units per day with serviced and documented land from now till 2030.» unhabitat.org

What do these colossal numbers mean in terms of what we build and how we build it? The building industry is generally acknowledged as the source of approximately forty percent of CO2 emissions from material extraction to building production. How will this energy intensive industry comply with the necessity to produce much more but consume much less?

Last century’s industrialisation and political conflicts put a similar strain on housing and underwrote its lot of experiments into producing more while using less. Structural and functional efficiency were the staples of 20th century building system’s experimentation; From the Japanese metabolist experiments in mobility to Walter Segal’s experiments in self-build, these extremes framed architectural visions for improving the world we live in.

Buckminster Fuller’s work exemplified building more with less. From the 4D dwelling tower to the Dymaxion mobile units or dwelling machines and his geodesic structural prototypes, the quest for architectural and structural efficiency to serve the masses sustained Fuller’s experiments and his lasting legacy in architecture. His «standard of living package» proposed a potential industrialized process to reduce our impact on the planet and make a better house.

His explorations of an «Autonomous dwelling facility» elucidated by the «skybreak dwellings» studies included a transportable module of standard dimensions filled with commodities, which unfolded beneath a self-contained dome. Furniture, equipment, and a grand piano were part of the «standard of living package» and supported domesticity.

It seems naive today to imagine that all the requirements fit into one industrialized package as lifestyles differ as much as cultures, communities and individuals. The dream of an industrialized house seems in this sense further than ever as the critical needs for housing are more pronounced in non-industrialized countries: the need for 96 000 units per day is an epic crisis to which the only solution is optimism. The apex of architectural creativity has always been crisis and we hope that this century will be as fertile as the last for architectural prototypes. 

Buckminster Fuller's standard of living package - a transportable module of commodities

Prefabrication experiments - 99 - «HOMB»'s triangular tectonics

Method Homes is an American company based in Portland, Oregon. Established on a relatively new business model: made-to-order/measure modular prefab. Method Homes is part of an expanding generation of manufacturers that are attempting to expunge the long lasting tension between architectural originality and the advantages of factory production in matters of waste reduction, climate controlled quality, worker safety, productivity and timeline efficacy.

Connect Homes, Blu Homes, Arkit, Ecosteel, Muji, are just a few contemporary producers that renew prefab’s practical potential to serve but also energize its architectural output. Method Homes offers a series dwelling types, all with a characteristically «dwell» modern vibe articulated to a totally customizable buyer experience. In addition to this customizable experience, product families showcase associations with architecture and design firms.

The «HOMB» series has received attention from contemporary prefab literature as it relates production with modular mass-customization processes. «HOMB» functions as an open modular building system comparable to Swiss Architect Justin Dahinden’s Trigon 65.  The «HOMB», or an inhabitable honeycomb was co-developed by Skylab architecture, illustrating the fertile cross pollination between designers and producers: collaboration which is marginally present in the traditional prefab industry but supports many of the more progressive producers and embodies the contemporary sustainable design discourse.  

«HOMB»’s open structural system’s adaptability is governed by the strength and compositional agility of triangles. This straightforward but forceful search for innovative building and architectural systems arranges 102 square-foot triangular based prisms together in multiple geometries or architectural compositions and could generate infinitely adjustable plans. In a responsive display of architectural tectonics, the timber-framed triangles are revealed through the use of both contrasting materials for ceilings and exposed joinery. The geometric base adapts to any modular coordinated solid to a width of 13 feet. Designers and clients can personalize window sizes, finishes, and materials further enhancing the made-to-measure capacity of the planning grid.

This information based modelling collaboration between architects and manufacturers achieves a mass-customization potential characterized by its ordered variability. Along with its flexible organisation, Homb modular prefab proposes energy efficient systems for reducing the building’s environmental footprint. Method Homes and more specifically the «homb» series showcases a new prefab with quality, careful and collaborative design, open to a host of potentials from spatial organisation to overall system adaptability.

HOMB modules from the website

Prefabrication experiments - 98 - Micro spaces - Marcel Lods and the modernist tradition

Constructing an optimal protective shelter is a primordial instinct and an extension of the human form. Beyond being a defense device, shelter is an expression of basic ergonomics: cooking, eating, socializing and sleeping all propose specific dimensions and interactions, which formulate architectural space.

Micro-architecture, as a study of small spaces, stems from man’s instinctive needs and has evolved into a specific type of architecture intimately relating body, space and architectural innovation. The obsession with small spaces has integrated architectural education and the focal point of many projects looking to succeed where many generations failed: the manufactured home. Founded on displaying architectural knowledge, craftsmanship and an ambition to precisely choreograph the use of every cubic millimeter of space, the minimal dwelling is also the subject of architectural literature (see Karel Teige minimal dwelling or Le Corbusier’s modulor) and the object of many inspiring architectural designs.

Rooted in early 20^th century values many modernist prototypes continue to engage disciplinary discourse. Designed in 1937, Marcel Lods accompanied by Beaudoin and Prouvé designed a bent flat plate light steel prototype mini-house as their examination of a potential industrialized house. The folded plate easily assembled and disassembled weekend house echoed automobile technology and suggested a future articulated to mobile architecture. Perhaps foreshadowing today’s tiny house movement, the tiny, micro, or small home was showcased as an efficient form of individualized living. Built on this modernist heritage the recent 27m3 micro-compact home by Richard Horden or Patkau architects weekend house are part of this conceptual framework that built the long lasting obsession between architects and minimal dwellings.

The relationship between Lod's weekend house and its contemporary descendants exceeds the simple cubic no frills aesthetic as the three projects seek to relate human dimensions and ergonomic spatial design through a seamless link between architecture and built-in functional objects. Each unit of space is optimized technically and logistically. The unified relationship between material, body and space transforms the house into an operable furniture piece allowing the user to activate certain components and become the datum by which the project is defined. The body develops the «tracé régulateur» regulating trait or force of architectural form.

Marcel Lods (left), Patkau architects(center), Richard Horden(right)

Prefabrication experiments - 97 - Harnessing a new business model

The literature examining the relationship between architecture, industrialisation and prefabrication seldom includes inquiry into the business models that uphold manufactured architecture. Prefabrication is either discussed through a romantic architectural point of view or from the other end of the spectrum as a business of mass production. The latter is the predominant business model, which hasn't changed since military technology and government underwrote the industry's development.  In Canada for example, a recent revealed that approximately ninety percent of companies implement a modular or panelized production model. A wide-ranging assessment: early industrial Fordisms continue to sustain the basic business model.

In matters of design, the pattern book still dominates product variety, however the evolution from mass production to lean construction and to today’s digitally controlled fabrication has generated a new customized and customizable form of prefabrication. The offsite construction industry can seamlessly link production and delivery with on-site quality control and end of service-life disassembly. The design/prefabrication shop, is a burgeoning model of customized kit building based on an open exchange of information between client, designer and manufacturer through an integrated building model. Relating kit building, dry construction methods, with information technology, each building is thoroughly and virtually designed before its just-in-time production. This revolution points off-site construction toward a made-to-order business model rather than the production based model that we are used to.

Architects and researchers such as Kieran and Timberlake embody this type of integrated design to manufacturing process. This kit culture seems to be quite prevalent in Australia. Australia has a rich prefab heritage. The iron houses of the Australian gold rush, postwar timber houses and perhaps most notably Glenn Murcutt's work in the establishing the relationship between customized design and quality architectural production laid the ground work for a strong prefab kit building culture. ARKit (www.arkit.com.au) is an Australian architectural design / manufacturing practise which exemplifies this new prefab business model. Articulated to quality design, craftsmanship and efficiency, Arkit argues for a customized kit of parts construction process, which allows for a totally personalized architecture seamlessly controlled on and off-site. A long way from the repetitive connotation, ARKit and this customized prefab reforms the usual process-based business model promoted by enterprise since the late 19th century.

Form workshop to site - Arkit embodies a new personalized prefab