Question:
Are there any new materials or technologies which are making prefab construction more cost effective?

Answer:
As far as I am aware, no none that directly pertain to offsite construction.

There are some new building materials on the horizon that show promise, but as of yet they have not made it into prefab production. At this time, the cost benefit of prefab is in the process, not the materials. This could easily change in the near future as the supply chain becomes more robust, but for now the focus has been on tweaking standard methods to make building more cost effective.

Manufacturing processes that allow repetitive work to be done quickly is the chief driver of prefab right now. Quick assembly once on the site is another. Use of sustainable building practices is yet another. Perhaps one aspect of using manufactured processes that is a new benefit to the building world is the idea of greater precision in building. Products produced in a factory setting are inherently built more accurately than on site work. This can translate into stronger and more efficient buildings. The application of the methodology to architecture is somewhat new. The building materials and technologies, however, still tend to parallel standard construction.

Related link: http://www.newschoolarch.edu

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2012

Question:
How do you think increasing populations and decreasing jobs will effect construction and what role will prefab play in this environment? World Populations: 1938 2 Billion, 2006 6.5 Billion, 2030 8.3 Billion.

Answer:
This is an interesting question. I think that if you look at China and India right now you will see two countries that are experiencing a great deal of population growth pressure. In these countries, you can already see some of the answers that occur in these kinds of resource stressing situations. Because of the prefab benefit of speed to occupancy, both China and India are becoming bigger and bigger proponents of prefab construction. They are already implementing these methods at a greater pace than most other countries. They have learned that when the complete supply chain is in place, prefabrication can be used to turn out a great deal of building square footage very fast.

While quick building does move toward ‘solving’ the problem of housing shortages, it is typically being done with generic buildings, not architecture. Unfortunately, just creating housing rapidly means there will be a lack of consideration for how people live and how that housing works within a cultural context. This will naturally lead to significant social problems down the road. This is, though, not a problem caused by prefabrication, but prefab may wind up taking the blame. The problem, at its root, is caused by societies reacting to the past and not planning or designing for the future. This is one reason I am such an advocate for architects becoming more knowledgeable about prefabrication. If architects do not, good design will be ignored for speed. In the end, nothing good will come from that.

Where is the architecture?
- Video of 15 story Chinese hotel built in 6 days:
http://youtu.be/JtdorKaOSQk
- Video of 30 story Chinese hotel built in 15 days:
http://gizmodo.com/5873962/amazing-timelapse-of-30+story-building-made-in-only-360-hours

Related link: http://www.newschoolarch.edu

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2012

Question:
Is there a minimum size for a project to make prefab economically viable?

Answer:
No. Prefab is a generic concept that has been used to make buildings as small as garden sheds (1 small module) and as large as a 24 story apartment building (500+ large modules). Viability is determined by all the factors that go into making the building, including understanding the supply chain that produces the factory made components and the efficiencies inherent in that chain.

In the case of the garden shed, the sheds are standard designs produced by the hundreds, if not thousands. In the case of the 24 story building, the resulting building is a single architectural structure. One commonality that lead to the economic success in both examples is the use of repetition where repetition made sense. In the case of the garden shed, repetition is probably obvious as each shed is a copy of a singular design. In the example of the 25 story building, the architect cleverly exploited repetition in the layout of the apartments so that very few unique modules were used yet an overall creative architectural solution was achieved.

The fundamental lesson of economic viability here is that if you want to use prefab for a small building, make many replicas of the same building. If you want to use prefab for a large building, make it from many similar components.

Related link: http://www.newschoolarch.edu

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2011

Question:
Is transportation of prefab/modular units a significant cost factor?

Answer:
The general answer would be ‘yes’, but how significant is dependent on the details of the project. These details include: the distance and travel conditions between the project and the factory, the size and weight of the prefab components, and the cost of labor at the two locations. To illustrate the extremes, I am aware of projects that were as simple as lightweight bathrooms pods built less than a mile from the project site, to very heavy fully furnished apartment modules that were shipped hundreds of miles, over both seas and roads, and even between two countries. The cost of the transportation was clearly very different being much greater in the second example, yet both projects made financial sense.

To understand the impacts of transportation, keep in mind that costs associated with transportation are not new or exclusive to prefab vs site built. All building construction has transportation costs inherent in the project. Regardless of the method of construction, both materials and labor come from somewhere other than the construction site.

To understand the differences, however, let’s first consider the case of the transportation of labor. In this regard, offsite construction is particularly efficient vs onsite. Workers at a factory tend to live near the factory and so have very consistent and minimal travel distances to the work site (ie the factory). Additionally, carpooling and other energy efficient commuting options become very real in this scheme. In the case of onsite construction, the travel distance for labor is a variable and completely dependent on the location of the trades needed and the building being constructed. Onsite construction requires a more skilled labor force than offsite construction. It is often the case the specialty trades will travel greater distances to reach a construction site than unskilled labor to factories. For onsite construction the location of the worker to the work site is in constant flux with each building built. This is not so with offsite methods.

There is a similar effect with the delivery of materials. Offsite construction occurs on singular factory sites where there tends to be large and protected staging areas. This means materials can be ordered and stored in weather protected areas in bulk far in advance of assembly. Factories also tend to be geographically clustered and located within proximities to construction material suppliers. These two factors greatly increase the efficiency of material delivery to the point of assembly.

For prefab, there is then unique cost of transporting large assemblies to the building site. Unlike traditional onsite labor and material logistics, however, prefab assemblies carry with them substantial embodied bulk material and embodied bulk labor, and are thus extremely efficient transportation hauls.

Because of these efficiencies and the addition of labor to the total transportation cost of building, the equation of transportation related costs and its percentage of the total building cost, has many components and modifiers to consider in the final equation. This is why, depending on the project, it can actually be cost effective to ship large and heavy modules long distances.

Related link: http://www.newschoolarch.edu

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2011

Q: What do the Marmol-Radziner Desert House, the Sunset Breeze House, the WIRED Livinghome and High Tech High all have in common?

A: They are all modular and they were all engineered by the modular experts RS Tavares Associates!

Come hear Ralph Tavares, PE share his insights into these and other special modular buildings at the next Brown Bag Roundtable on Modular Architecture.

All AIA members welcome. For more information, link here.

Brown Bag Roundtable: Modular Architecture
December 6, 2011
12-130pm
San Diego AIA

If you are unable to attend this meeting, consider joining the The Modular and Prefabricated Architecture Group on the AIAKnowledgeNet.

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2011

Sometimes we might have to read a poem a couple of times before we start to understand the nuance in what the poet is trying to convey. This is also true with architecture, and it is true with the desert.

Borrego Springs, California is a place of poetic realization. It is a place that brings a post-war vision of modern living to a dramatic desert landscape. It is a gem worthy of notice. Borrego Springs is becoming known as a great place for mid-century modern architecture, yet it too deserves a second read. The mid-century modern architecture in Borrego Springs is quite good, but one of the more fascinating architectural aspects of its modernism is its contextual and temporal influence on traditional modern architecture’s precepts.

MODERNISM’S BASICS

One of the basic tenets of modernism is the idea of form following and expressing function. The first modernists sought early inspiration from other structures that were purpose built, structures like factories and steam ships. In their design pursuits they sought purity of form, removal of non-functional ornament, and the visual and engineering exploitation of modern materials of construction. The formal results of that first wave of modernists coming from Europe and the Bauhaus in Germany was a very clean, mostly rectilinear vocabulary. In the hands of masters like Mies van der Rohe, exquisite and poetic works of architecture emerged from modernism’s foundations. One of the iconic designs to come at the peak of this era of modernism is the Farnsworth House by Mies (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Farnsworth House, Plano, IL (near Chicago)
Architect: Mies van der Rohe, c. 1946
Source: Wikipedia.org

POST-WAR SHIFTS

By the end of WWII, the center of the modern movement had shifted. Mies had left the Bauhaus and landed in Chicago. It was a logical choice as Chicago had already established itself as the center of new American architecture with Sullivan, Wright and others. Along with the apprentices working in Chicago’s architectural studios, Mies began teaching modernism at the Illinois Institute of Technology to a new generation of modernists. Modernism thrived there, carrying on and refining the idea of form’s relationship to function.

But something else was happening at the same time. A number of architects having worked in the Midwest wound up moving to Southern California. Irving Gill was one of the first to open that door and bring modernism and Chicago’s architectural thinking to California. His work was brilliant and on the cutting edge, but he was early and wound up working in relative isolation. That all changed with WWII. Just before and during WWII, California became a big part of the defense buildup and major new industries were being established there. To support this new industrial wave, European and American design talent began moving west in significant numbers.

After WWII, Southern California found itself caught in a major economic and cultural wave. There were many creative minds at work during this period. This is, for example, the time of the now famous Case Study Houses project by Arts & Architecture magazine. This project was all about taking the ideas of modern architecture and adopting them to a new emerging modern California lifestyle. Where the Farnsworth House was a tight and precise machine raised above and apart from the landscape, the California movement, as exemplified by Case Study Houses, where rooted in the ground and anchored to the pleasant Mediterranean climate of coastal Southern California. Case Study House #22 (Figure 2) is a good example of how the line between inside and outside had disappeared. Nature now flowed into and through these homes, though formally they still strongly resembled their European precedents.

Figure 2: Stahl House, Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, CA
Architect: Pierre Koenig, c.1960
Source: Wikipedia.org

The idea of integrating nature into architecture had long been talked about by architects of the modern age, and some, like Gill and Aalto, had success with the idea. Post WWII California, however, brought modernism into a symbiotic relationship with the earth.

DESERT TWEAKING – DESERT MODERN

The desert is an interesting place. It is extreme in its climate and subtle in its beauty. It is a place that never lets you forget where you are. It never lets you separate yourself from it. It demands your attention. When you understand its energy, and you give in to it, you come to know the power and beauty of all of nature. The desert is poetic, and it has a powerful draw to a special kind of person.

Borrego Springs sits in the middle of the Anza Borrego Desert (Figures 3 & 4). It was the perfect place for the ideas being developed in Los Angeles and San Diego to take on a new dimension. The timing was also right. This community was just being built in the 1950′s and 1960′s. Unlike the first modernists, though, factories and ships where no longer adequate formal inspirations. The sun and climate of the desert demanded a rethink, a tweak.

Figure 3: Borrego Springs and Anza Borrego Desert, CA
Source: Google Earth

Figure 4: Borrego Springs and Anza Borrego Desert, CA
Source: Google Earth

The modern ideas that emerged in this desert brought together the notions of being rooted to the earth, soaring through it’s warm air, and finding comfort and shelter from its searing heat and sun. These ideas all emerged from one Richard Zerbe. An unlikely hero, Zerbe came to Borrego Springs through an apparently random series of events. As it turned out, he was the right person, in the right place, at the right time to create an architecture that is special to its time and place.

Zerbe, who first studied aeronautical engineering in Pittsburg, found his way to San Diego as a young man. He wound up working in the new aerospace industry, which was then booming in Southern California. A few years later he changed careers to become an architect, moved to east San Diego County near the Anza Borrego desert, and wound up creating a special contextual and spiritual modernist style in the process.

As with earlier modernists, Zerbe kept to a tightly engineered design, with a form follows function approach. He also kept the openness, pushing the idea of enclosure to the background. From the Southern California modern variant, he placed his buildings on the desert floor, allowing the inside and outside to be one. What Zerbe did with his roof design, though, is what really sets him and his buildings apart and creates a new Borrego Springs architectural zeitgeist.

Because the desert sun is so strong, Zerbe pushed the roof edges way out beyond the wall line to create ample shade below. With this strong roof and the modernist transparency below, he then tilted the roof slightly. Unlike the low pitch of a Prairie style hip roof, Zerbe created massive roof planes that hover above his buildings (Figure 5 & 6). They take on the characteristics of a large airplane wing. He exploited that notion by detailing the roof structure like the aeronautical engineer he was. The struts and outrigger framing where exposed and tapered to enhance the aeronautical metaphor (Figures 6 & 7). Vertical members were diminished to reduce their obstructions to the floating horizontal lines (Figures 8 & 9). Like Wright who saw and emulated the horizontal lines of the prairie, Zerbe saw the horizontal shape of the wind and of flight and emulated them. The desert breezes flow over and under his roofs, like the wings of a soaring airplane. They also provide the very functional role of shading and a cooling the people under those wings. Zerbe created the Desert Modern style.

Figure 5: Cosgrove House, Borrego Springs, CA
Architect: Richard Zerbe, c. 1957
Source: www.BorregoModern.com/Zerbe Architectural Archive

Figure 6: Fairway Cottage #11, Borrego Springs, CA
Architect: Richard Zerbe, c. 1957
Source: © Judy Parker 2010 (http://www.judyparker.com)

Figure 7: Fairway Cottage #11, Borrego Springs, CA
Architect: Richard Zerbe, c. 1957
Source: © Todd Pitman 2010

Figure 8: Common Area Units 9-12, Borrego Springs, CA
Architect: Richard Zerbe, c. 1957
Source: www.BorregoModern.com/Zerbe Architectural Archive

Figure 9: Common Area Units 1-4, Borrego Springs, CA
Architect: Richard Zerbe, c. 1957
Source: www.BorregoModern.com/Zerbe Architectural Archive

Richard Zerbe’s work in Borrego Springs is unique and shows us how context and time can be used to create architectural form. Zerbe was a nuanced architectural poet, and his work deserves multiple readings.

To be sure, this blog post only presents a very thin slice of Borrego Springs and the many modern architectural delights to be found there. This post is intended to highlight some of the special architecture and its contextual modernism that really stands out. Borrego Springs and its surrounding desert have a lot more to offer than just Zerbe’s work. If you have an appreciation for mid-century modernism, modern modernism and/or the desert, Borrego Springs is well worth a visit.

For the details of Zerbe, his work and all things Borrego, I would especially like to thank Bill Lawrence. His research and enthusiasm for Borrego Springs architecture and its history is contagious and unequaled. My knowledge of the place would be strictly experiential if it were not for his work. The details of Zerbe’s life and work, as well as the historical photos of Borrego Springs included here are the result of his diligent research. To learn a lot more about this interesting community and its architecture visit Bill’s extensive website: http://www.borregomodern.com

For information about the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park that surrounds Borrego Springs and continues to inspire its architecture, visit: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=638

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2011

Question:
What percentage of time and money do you think prefab can save a project?

Answer:
When it comes to prefab, generalized questions can be difficult to answer. In general, on a direct apples-to-apples comparison, I would say that you could expect that a prefab project can be 0-15% less per square foot than a traditionally built project of the same design and specifications. There are too many variables, though, to allow a hard and fast rule as to discounts.

It is also important to keep in mind that when we are talking about prefab, we can be talking about prefab architecture or prefab building. When I talk about prefab architecture, I am using the idea that architecture is a high quality building designed by a professional and it is always site specific. This means that each prefab architecture project will be unique to the site it is being placed on. The quality of the end result will be high quality, and the owner will be a ‘client’ of a professional architect. Prefab building, in contrast, is a generic ‘product’ that can be non-site specific. The quality can vary dramatically from project to project and the owner of this product is a customer of a building company.

The other important thing to consider is the definition of “project”. Architects tend to think of a project as the specific building they are working on. Building owners, however, think of a “project” as the entire business model related to that building. This includes the architecture plus: land acquisition and development, operations and maintenance, financing, cash flow and other business considerations. To answer the question about prefab architecture from the architect’s side, at this time a prefab architecture project has no inherent time or money advantages to the architect except as it may add value for their clients. To answer the question from the owner’s perspective regarding prefab architecture, it can have significant time savings, which to the owner can translate into a huge financial savings to the non-architectural aspects of the project. The amount of savings is, of course, dependent on the project.

Typical Modular Home, USA
2 Offsite Stories, 1 Single Family House, 4 Modules

On the small scale, in the US right now it is very easy for a homebuyer to buy a house much like they buy a car. The homebuyer can go to a sales lot of a manufactured home builder, tour model homes, pick out their model, pick out colors and finishes, and have their new home delivered in a very short amount of time. These homebuyers are buying a prefab building, not prefab architecture. The opportunity for this kind of building to become architecture is very limited. Because prefabrication is a method of construction that takes advantage of manufacturing processes, the economic side of prefab is most successful when there is volume on the production side. One single family home does not afford current manufacturing processes the kind of efficiencies needed to be cost effective. In the case of a home or small commercial building, volume is achieved when many of the same design are produced. In this situation, the efficiency is dispersed among many buyers. This means, naturally, that each individual buyer looses the opportunity to influence the design and quality of their purchase.

Modular Housing, England
10 Offsite Stories, 162 Apartments, 630 Modules

On the large scale, the prefab building buyer is also buying the convenience of speed to occupancy, but the larger scale can allow the project to be more architectural. Fundamentally the building process is relatively the same between prefab and onsite construction, except that the offsite components can be built simultaneously with much of the onsite work. The onsite assembly of the offsite components can then occur very rapidly. On a large project this can save a lot of time, and thus a lot of money to the owner. This is important, as even if the square footage costs of onsite and offsite construction are nearly identical, the cost savings to the owner can be very significant and far exceed the 0-15% savings in square footage costs. Unlike a single family home, the size of a large project can allow the design to take on far more significant role than is possible in small projects. It is the large projects that create the greatest opportunity for all the benefits of prefabrication and the application of real architecture to meld. This is the future of prefabrication in architecture.

Related link: http://www.newschoolarch.edu

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2011

Link below to view the glossary page, which will be updated frequently with new words. We would also like to invite you to suggest new terms or expressions you would like to see added to our lexicon by typing within our comment area.

LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)
LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system. It provides third-party substantiation that a building or community was designed and built to be sustainable by establishing metrics for energy savings, water efficiency, CO₂ emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. Founded by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED is an open process that is publicly reviewed and provides a framework for identifying and implementing measurable and practical green building solutions.

Miletus Group is a member of USGBC and endorses the LEED program as a powerful tool to bringing the built environment to higher levels of sustainability.

BIM (Building Information Model/Modeling)
The National Building Information Model Standard Project Committee defines BIM as: a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its lifecycle: defined as existing from earliest conception to demolition. According to Building Design + Construction magazine, more than 100 top design firms identify revenue from BIM projects and in the top 10, BIM is used in 58-85% of projects. Practically, BIM is about information management, which is shared by all project participants, using technology to advance creativity, productivity, and team empowerment.

Miletus Group utilizes BIM in its workflow and believes it is a superior way to bring greater design, documentation and construction efficiencies to the architectural and modular building process.

Renovated Reuse (in modular buildings)
Renovated Reuse can be defined as a reconfiguration of an existing modular building or modular building component to meet the needs of a new configuration, use or location. Renovated Reuse can be applied to all modular buildings whether temporary or permanent. Renovated Reuse is a very green process in that whole buildings and large building components can be diverted from the landfill. In the case of reuse of modular buildings and modular components, the green process is still further enhanced, as direct reuse requires far less embodied energy than recycling. Because of their component nature, modular building components can be designed in advance, as a part of their life cycle, to be deconstructed and reconstructed so that Renovated Reuse is a strategic part of a new building’s business model.

In 2009 a Miletus Group renovated reuse modular project won an MBI Award of Distinction for its design conversion of a modular office building to a sustainable modular climate controlled warehouse.

Net-Zero Energy
Net-Zero describes buildings with zero net energy consumption from non-renewable resources and zero carbon emissions annually. Zero energy buildings do not need to be reliant on a traditional energy grid supply. Energy can be harvested using Solar, Wind or Geothermal technologies while also reducing the overall energy consumption. The zero-energy design principle is becoming more practical to adopt due the rising costs and negative impact of fossil fuels as well as the advent of efficient alternative energy sources. There is some debate in the design community as to whether or not renewable energy sources must occur on site to be considered true net zero. At Miletus Group we believe that it is more efficient to have the energy source as near to the point of use as possible, but it is not always the case that the best solution has the energy source on site. The location of renewable energy sources should be made on a case-by-case basis.

Link to Glossary Page

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2011

A456
http://www.aggregat456.com/search/label/architecture
A456 offers postings about architecture and design-based ideas across a variety of disciplines. Author Enrique Ramirez is a PhD candidate at the Princeton University School of Architecture, and is a 2007 graduate of the Master of Environmental Design program at the Yale School of Architecture.

Urban Planning Blog
http://urbanplanningblog.com
Pratik Mhatre (Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Science, Masters Degree in Public Policy and an undergraduate degree in Architecture) provides his thoughts on urban planning and design. He is deeply interested in the relationship of public policy and the built environment; especially the intersection of public health policies and their impact on socio-economic characteristics of the neighborhood/community.

DigitalUrban.org
http://www.digitalurban.org
Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith, author of the Digital Urban Blog with 5200 daily readers, has been at the forefront of developing digital geographical technologies that support design professionals working in the built environment. He is the Director and Deputy Chair of CASA, Editor-in-Chief of Future Internet Journal, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Course Founder and Director of the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualization at University College London.