Archinect - News

Can modular housing startups be saved at a critical time for the industry?

2024-01-18T14:08:00-05:00

The notion that factory-built modular homes can serve as the salvation to America's vexing housing crisis has increasingly come under scrutiny, a report summarized recently in Business Insider.

A crippling lack of widespread success for modular housing startups can be attributed to state and federal manufacturing regulatory barriers, a lack of builders’ experience, investors’ overconfidence, local building codes, persistent social stigmas about prefabricated homes, and an overall lack of demand. The inflexibility of the prefabrication process for single-family designs is another factor hindering many businesses as well, according to the article.

Katerra and, more recently, Veev are perhaps the best-known examples. The once $1 billion Bay Area ‘unicorn’ shuttered its U.S. operation in November after constructing 170 units total in 15 years. Veev's failure can be boiled down to a fla...

andblack design studio creates a modular, prefabricated black box theater with multifunctional use

2023-06-22T17:37:00-04:00

Kanika and Jwalant Mahadevwala, architects and founding partners of andblack design studio, have created a multifunctional black box theater design that uses parametric models to "allow customization of several variables to achieve the specified volume." Their design prototype, Darwin Bucky, is a prefabricated kit of parts made of wood, aluminum, steel, and glass.

Designed for Abhay Mangaldas, founder of India-based startup Darwin, the lightweight modular panel design is a flat-pack system that emphasizes versatile on-site assembly.

Darwin Bucky assembly. Image © Vinay Panjwani.

According to the architects, Darwin Bucky is a "black box that can be used as an exhibition gallery, a town hall, an expo center, a performance arena, or even serve as a bar or a nightclub. It is designed to be placed in public gardens, exhibition grounds, or even in a city center."

Aerial view of Darwin Bucky site. Image © Vinay Panjwani.

Without the need for a ...

Virginia Tech team completes world-first observation tower with innovative low-carbon timber

2022-04-20T11:51:00-04:00

A team of students and faculty at Virginia Tech has completed an innovative observation tower in rural Virginia. The design and delivery of the project saw the development and certification of a new custom timber product, off-site prefabrication, and the discovery of the ruins of a historic building.

Photography by Kay Edge and Edward Becker

The project, formally titled the New River Train Observation Tower, was delivered to the city of Radford, Virginia. In 2018, the city commissioned Virginia Tech to design and build a train observation tower that would create publicly accessible views over the city’s New River and a historically significant railroad bridge. With a budget of $100,000, the city requested that the tower used clean-tech, low-carbon building products to showcase the city’s transition away from its industrial past.

Photography by Kay Edge and Edward Becker

The student/faculty team initially sought to construct the tower from cross-laminated timber (CLT) due to its durab...

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport has built four new gates composed of prefabricated modules

2021-09-28T14:59:00-04:00

In an unprecedented move, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) has constructed four new prefabricated modular gates for its Terminal C.

The gates replace a 72,000-square-foot extension comprising five gates built in 1988. According to CNN, they were initially intended to be used for only 10 to 15 years at the most, however, due to their central location and constant use, DFW chose not to replace them until now. Their demolition began in February and was finished in March, which is when work on the foundation and underground utilities for the new gates began. This effort was completed in August.

Check out the progress on the High C Gates at DFW!

The new, 5-gate concourse is being built in prefabricated modules, which will be transported to the terminal and put together later this summer. The construction method saves time and money, and is a first for a U.S. airport. pic.twitter.com/zd0P7Ra3AH
— DFW Airport (@DFWAirport) July 13, 2021

DFW worked with construction companies A...

UCLA’s BruinHub will give respite to students facing long commutes and housing insecurity

2021-09-24T11:43:00-04:00

The UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, in collaboration with cityLAB, has officially opened the BruinHub, a first-of-its-kind space serving UCLA students facing long commutes or housing insecurity. Located in the John Wooden Center, the BruinHub will be a 24/7 space with facilities for students to nap, rest, study, store belongings, and wait out traffic.

BruinHub launch, September 23rd, 2021. Image courtesy of UCLA

The design of the BruinHub centers on Study Pods; prefabricated units constructed from machine-cut OSB and finished with vibrant-colored fabrics. Each pod contains a flexible bench which can be used for sleeping or studying, as well as a worktop, reading lamp, storage space, and power outlet. The wider facility also includes WiFi, charging stations, a food prep station, personal storage, and a hub for distributing important campus information and services. The hub has been designed to meet COVID-based safety standards for sanitizing and social distancing.

Video...

10-story apartment building in Changsha, China erected in 28 hours

2021-06-22T20:26:00-04:00

Chinese manufacturing company Broad Group has constructed a 10-story apartment building in just over a day.

Called the Living Building, the structure is located in the company’s headquarters location of Changsha, China. A timelapse released by Broad Group shows the apartment block being erected in just 28 hours and 45 minutes with the help of three cranes and a large team of workers.

Video via Broad Group on YouTube.

Broad Group specializes in manufacturing a range of air conditioning, heating, and prefabricated structural units. As stated in the project’s publicity video, the company has been developing factory-made steel buildings since 2009. Additionally, Broad Group claims that this is the world’s shortest construction period.

The Living Building was constructed using modular units that were made off-site in a factory. It was designed to be easy to transport and install. The structure is made of pure stainless steel, with each module sized at forty feet long, eight feet wide,...

Modular construction startup Katerra cuts 200 jobs to embrace automation

2019-12-13T17:08:00-05:00

Katerra Inc., a modular construction startup, got an $865 million cash infusion from investors led by SoftBank Group Corp. last year. Now, the company is shutting down a factory in Phoenix and cutting 200 jobs. The move will shift Katerra’s manufacturing away from Phoenix and into its highly automated and lower-cost factory in Tracy, California.

The company's mission is to "shake up the construction industry with a combination of efficient factories, prefab parts and modular construction units," Bloomberg reports. The Phoenix factory will remain open thorugh the end of the year and affected employees will receive a 90-day severance package.

Katerra acquires two general contractors to bolster nationwide presence

2019-09-13T16:50:00-04:00

US prefab specialist Katerra has added two contractors to its stable of companies: UEB Builders and Fortune-Johnson General Contractors. The acquisitions allow the Silicon Valley company to expand its coverage of the US market. UEB Builders is a general contractor in Arizona that constructs commercial and residential projects. Georgia-based Fortune-Johnson specialises in multi-family residential projects. Both companies will adopt the Katerra brand.

According to Bim+, the acquisition will add 320 employees to Katerra's payroll, pushing the company's workforce to 8,500 individuals. In January 2019, the end-to-end building services provider also received an infusion of investment from Japan's SoftBank that raised Katerra's valuation to over $4 billion.

World's tallest modular hotel, rising in NYC this fall, aims to establish prefabrication on a grand scale

2019-05-01T18:32:00-04:00

The world’s biggest hotel company is betting that factory-built guest rooms are a key to juicing revenue -- and helping guests get a better night’s sleep. Marriott International Inc. is laying plans for what it says will be the tallest modular hotel in the world, in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood. Its 168 guest rooms will be assembled in a factory in Poland, shipped overseas and trucked into New York in the middle of the night, when the city streets can accommodate the oversized loads.

Marriott International hopes to spearhead a new movement of prefabricated tall buildings with the development of its 26-story, $65 million AC Hotel New York NoMad, announcing that "once erected over a 90-day period, the 360-foot-tall tower will represent a milestone for Marriott’s ongoing initiative to encourage hotel developers in North America to embrace modular for new construction projects."

Design and image credit: Danny Forster & Architecture

"The 168-room, 26-story AC Hotel New York NoMad is scheduled to rise at 842 Sixth Avenue with prefabricated guestrooms arriving at the hotel site fully constructed, inside and out," explains the project description. "Besides finished, painted walls, each 'module' will contain a fully outfitted guest room – with beds, sheets, pillows, flooring and even toiletries. The hotel’s roof and rooftop bar are expected to be produced using modular construction, and its more customized public areas such as the restaurant and lobby are expected to be c...

California-based construction start-up Katerra valued at more than $4bn with help from Japan's SoftBank

2019-01-16T14:38:00-05:00

In just four years, the Silicon Valley start-up Katerra has grown from a sizable construction firm to one of the industry's biggest disrupters. Now, with support from one of the tech industry's biggest investors, the California-based construction company has announced plans for another investment round that will have it valued at more than $4 billion.

SoftBank, the billion dollar venture capital firm helping to bankroll companies such as Uber, WeWork and the indoor farming start-up Plenty, is expected to lead the $700 million round of financing for Katerra. This comes less than a year after the Japanese holdings company invested a prior $865 million into the company.

In Katerra, SoftBank is backing a revolutionary approach that promises to redefine the $12 trillion construction industry. The company's aim is to make the building construction process cheaper and more efficient and while Katerra is not unique in this quest, it is remarkable for its end-to-end design-build process whi...

This Belgian concrete factory shows how industrial buildings can be functional AND beautiful

2018-01-11T20:02:00-05:00

Belgian maker of architectural prefabricated concrete elements, Enjoy Concrete, show us how the product can be the architecture in its most beautiful sense: when the company was in need of a new industrial facility in the small town of Veurne, they partnered with Govaert & Vanhoutte Architects to design a headquarters that's constructed entirely from Enjoy Concrete's own prefabricated concrete elements.

The facade follows a strict 6x3-meter grid that applies the same proportions to the concrete panels as well as the windows.

While the building is mainly a big industrial hall for production and storage, it also contains a variety of office spaces spread over four stories. Its most striking feature is a cantilevered, glass-encased board room protruding dramatically from the top corner of the otherwise compact building volume.

Since the building is situated near a green canal la...

The S House prefab system hopes to bring super-low-cost housing to Vietnam — and the rest of the world

2017-07-05T14:55:00-04:00

Known as “S Houses,” these prefab structures going up here in Ba Vi, about 30 miles from Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, are iterations of a prototype that Mr. Nghia has been honing since about 2013. [...] But Mr. Nghia says that his plan is to mass-manufacture this portable, easy-to-assemble design for people in slums, remote areas or refugee camps around the world, beginning later this year, all for the starting price — $1,500 — of about two iPhones.

The NYT takes a closer look at the extremely affordable S House prefab system currently going up by the dozens in Vietnam, with a keen eye on the global super-low-cost market. Designed by Vo Trong Nghia Architects, a design studio with offices in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, S House was exhibited with a full-scale prototype at the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

S HOUSE at the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Photo: Steve Hall, Tom Harris, copyright: Hedrich Blessing, image via the architects' website.

If the firm name sounds strangely familiar, Vo Trong Nghia Architects won the 2014 World Architecture Festival 'House' category with the spectacular House for Trees project. VTN partner Masaaki Iwamoto is also a 2014 Wheelwright Prize finalist.

SHoP-designed Brooklyn tower – now world's tallest modular building – opens its doors

2016-11-22T14:32:00-05:00

After four years of delayed construction, financial missteps, and lawsuits, Forest City Ratner and Greenland U.S.A. are finally welcoming tenants into 461 Dean Street, currently the tallest high-rise in the world constructed with modular units. The 32-story tower on the edge of Prospect Heights and Park Slope offers sweeping views of brownstone Brooklyn, but its lengthy construction saga highlights the issues developers face when they build with modular construction in New York City.

The groundbreaking (but not trouble-free) development previously in the Archinect news:

Jean Nouvel's prefab 'Simple' home can be reconfigured from the inside out

2016-10-21T18:20:00-04:00

The modular, prefab 'Simple' house took only two days to build, and is now installed in Paris' Tuileries Garden, part of the FIAC art fair. Nouvel affectionately referred to Simple as "a mobile home that stays still," describing the moveable windows and partitions within the structure.

Produced with Revolution Precrafted, a prefab company producing "limited-edition" properties, the structure is made of lightweight aluminum exterior panels, with wood and foam interior lining. "All of the essential notions relating to housing must be condensed into a single object that can be built very quickly and inhabited by one, two, three or four people within the same volume," said Jean Nouvel of the home.

Ranging in designs from 40-160-square-meters, versions of the Simple house are available to purchase from Revolution, but for now the home will exist simply as a pavilion on the Tuileries grounds until October 28.

Check out more photos in the gallery below.

h/t The Spaces

To solve a housing crisis, invest more in modular construction

2016-07-19T13:15:00-04:00

Researchers from the University of British Columbia have suggested that modular construction techniques are key to assuaging cities' housing shortages.

Associate engineering professor Kasun Hewage at UBC, along with PhD candidate Mohammad Kamali, conducted "the first comprehensive review of conventional and modular construction research of its kind," and found that increased factory-produced housing should make it easier for prospective renters and buyers to find a place. It would help cities provide more options that can be built "cheaper, faster and results in fewer workplace injuries," according to Hewage. Their findings were recently published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

Modular construction is obviously not a new method, but has a bit of a negative rep according to the researchers—the public tends to associate the method with lower-quality structures, and communities like trailer parks. But the study, which reviewed construction data between 2000 and ...

Chinese prefab company builds a 57-story skyscraper in just 19 days

2015-04-30T14:07:00-04:00

A Chinese construction company is claiming to be the world’s fastest builder after erecting a 57-storey skyscraper in 19 working days in central China. Broad Sustainable Building, a prefab construction firm, put up the rectangular, glass and steel Mini Sky City in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha, assembling three floors a day using a modular method [...]. The company now has ambitions to assemble the world’s tallest skyscraper, at 220 floors, in only three months.

Work finally resumes at Brooklyn's modular prefab tower

2015-01-15T15:02:00-05:00

The world’s tallest proposed modular tower may actually reach its full potential. Developer Bruce Ratner has finally resumed work on his 32-story residential building next to the Barclays Center after a five-month hiatus stemming from a dispute with construction giant Skanska over the pre-fabricated design. As a result of that legal fight, Ratner gained control of Skanska’s factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where modules for the proposed tallest modular tower were made.

Previously:

Lego High-Rise: World's Tallest Modular Apartment Tower Getting Snapped Together In Brooklyn

2014-04-17T18:47:00-04:00

Inside a warehouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard steel beams and flat metal sheeting rest atop a workbench. A diagram–which looks an awful lot like IKEA furniture assembly instructions–spells out where each beam and metal screw belongs. [...] The metal may not look like much yet, but it’s on its way to becoming part of the world’s tallest modular residential high-rise. [...] “This is bringing the best of manufacturing and construction together.”

Allison Arieff declares "Prefab Lives!"

2013-05-24T12:50:00-04:00

B2, a 32-story tower that is part of a 1,500-unit, mixed-use complex designed by SHoP Architects for Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, will soon be the tallest modular building in the world. nARCHITECTS recently won adaptNYC’s competition to design a micro-unit apartment building, and will see its concept transformed into a 10-story building by 2015. It will be the first multiunit building in Manhattan to be built with modular construction.

Modular construction is gaining popularity across New York City

2013-03-17T16:03:00-04:00

“Any change in the way you do business involves some concerns and issues,” said Richard T. Anderson, the president of the New York Building Congress...“If for New York City construction, business as usual is a challenge, you need to change some of the basic ingredients, and labor and management needs to address this.”

In the Real Estate section of last Sunday's NYT, Julie Satow talks with architects, city officials, various trade organizations and developers (although no union representatives) about the recent growth in projects using prefabricated, modular construction techniques. Such an approach offers advantages in terms of speed and efficiency of construction. Yet, particularly for New York City’s powerful construction unions, does pose challenges.

Team Rhône-Alpes' Canopea House Wins the 2012 Solar Decathlon Europe

2012-09-29T17:29:00-04:00

Big news out of Madrid: Team Rhône-Alpes’ Canopea House has won the 2012 Solar Decathlon Europe! At the forefront of the competition since winning the Architecture and Operations prizes, this compact home is topped with a 10,7 kW array of photovoltaic panels that produce enough energy for both floors and a mini EV.