Personal Innovations for Prefab Housing

The market of pre-fabricated architecture, though pure in intentions, has been falling short for some years now.  Some believe this economic instability may be due to the recent market flops; others think the continuous production needed to maintain profit along an assembly line will never be fulfilled.  Either way, the underlying principles of this design strategy are positively swayed toward highly efficient construction.  Buckminster Fuller’s, Nine Chains to the Moon, argues strongly for the cost efficient process of prefab in contrast to site built construction, but for reasons concerning the elimination of slum developments.  “The industry may safely assume that not only will it be able to rent every last unit full time, but also that it will be unable to manufacture additional units fast enough to keep up with the demand for centuries to come.” 

 

The problems of prefabricated design lie in the constraints of shipping sizes.  ISO (International Shipping Organization) standard shipping sizes have become the new trend for modular transport in recent years, which greatly reduces traditional shipping costs of prior modular transit, but I believe (and the industries’ success proves this) that this is clearly the wrong answer.  The solution must be studied from a fresh approach.  In my current graduate studio course (with Mike Patterson), my team of four and myself have come up with an answer that we believe to be a viable future direction for prefab; modular factories.  Below you will find images of our recent renderings…

Traditional prefab consists of mass producing modular units that are then shipped (as empty masses) from the factory location to the clients chosen site.  Our plan is to ship the factory to the clients site, construct prefab modules on site to form multi-family structures, then when complete, ship the factory to the next location, leaving in its place communal spaces for the soon to be residents.  Now with this approach, individual prefabricated homes will not be possible due to the fact that the cost for us to ship the entire factory to the site for one unit would outweigh the cost of the unit itself.  Also along this notion, the contractor will have to sell all needed modules to “break even” before the factory begins construction.  This ensures that the contractor will not have to take a risk in the initial construction cost, seeing as the building will already be sold to the soon to be residents.  The units are also not limited by sizes set around the ISO standards because shipment is only necessary for the factory.  Due to this fact, our unit sizes are much larger and may be manufactured into any shape desired (as opposed to traditional “box” prefab design).  This is why we chose to design hexagonal floor plans; more space, structurally superior, and not traditional prefab.  In a nutshell, we have evolved a new building system that rests comfortably between site built and prefabrication.  The best of both worlds may be possible in accordance with our proposal.

I believe that the solution my group and I have presented toward prefabrication would be exactly the proposal Buckminster Fuller has been looking for, “…they are designed and financed to be SOLD, despite the current admission of the president of the National Association of Real Estate…”  Also in accordance with Mr. Fuller, a major company (ours being Android Developments ^TM) would be the initial overhead cost holders to ensure financial reality of the factory’s success.  “It is not our contention that all skyscrapers should be utilized for the slum dwellers’ rescue.  There are logically highly rented business structures such as those in Radio City which have been cleverly designed around the interests of the new radio industry and its attendant high communication, publicity, advertising and news potentials…”

If you wish to know more detail about my team’s proposal for multifamily prefabrication and its factory systems, please comment questions below and I will do my best to respond quickly.