Why Affordable Housing Doesn't Exist
Why Modular Housing is Not Delivering
- There is limited coordination between disciplines - designer, engineer, manufacturer, builder, owner - in a complex process. Each break adds cost. Main one is designer is not the builder.
- Risk becomes concentrated at the point where players try to pass it on - at the interfaces between the packages, where it is neither owned, nor resolved - [1]
From Paulo Brito
Hi Marcin, I've been following open source ecology since 2015. So when my wife sent me this article I thought It might interest you: https://www.building.co.uk/communities/modular-is-not-delivering-heres-why/5107996.article
Cheers, Paulo Brito
MJ response:
Fascinating.
highly tuned to proprietary ideas, systems and assembly methods, incompatible with the scale the construction industry requires."
is an implicit admission that proprietary development is unsuited for solving pressing world issues. I am convinced that is the case - this is the first time I heard that stated quite explicitly.
On closer inspection two things are tripping us up on every project, and both are closely linked. Designers - architects and engineers - draw up a design intent, fully relying on that industrialised capacity of the specialist supply chain, leaving the detail to them. Each resolving what matters to their own industrialised product none of these specialists owning or incentivised to resolve the connections to any adjacent trade. The necessary physical coordination happens late in the process, or not at all. Back to the jack hammer"
We are addressing exactly this point with our Seed Home 2 release next year.
Each on their own and the risk becomes concentrated at the point where players try to pass it on - at the interfaces between the packages, where it is neither owned, nor resolved."
In our model, we address 100% of this risk by 100% integration of concept-design-engineering-build-use cycle. And we spread the cost risks between us and the owner builder.
It must go hand in hand with integrated computational modelling to handle the complexity that comes from detailing the physical connections of the building components."
Or you can create more robust design, especially by making it 'as simple as possible but no simpler' I think we are well-positioned to address exactly the interface issues - simply via an integrated, open source - and on top of that - Distributive Enterprise - process.
Thanks for this article.
Marcin
History of Modular Housing
Article - https://99percentinvisible.org/article/modularity-modern-history-modular-mass-housing-schemes/
- All of the following first fail because they are not open source.
- Cemesto went out of style?
- Lustron houses went the way of the Tucker?
- Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion houses were dysfunctional?
- Plug-In City - probably designed by designers, not builders? Once again following the basic critique of modular construction passing on the risk to the next guy, as in the section below on Why Modularity is Not Delivering.
- Moshe Safdie Habitat 67 was successful. Maybe not cheap.
- Nakagin Capsule Towers are in danger of demolition.
- Klip House. Huh?
