“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.” — NYT
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.
9 Comments
It should be a standard practice. Home construction prices are too expensive for all that custom work. Homes should be printed like cars.
Modular home constructions has its pros and cons, but which are more important?
quality of materials really needs to improve for these to become viable for "normal" housing. there are some problems with joints and settling (especially with wood boxes), but once you start getting into anything beyond white melamine, carpet, and vct, the cost savings are pretty minimal - unless you're in a market with high labor costs and you're sure you'll be able to generate income immediately - then it makes sense...
The modern modular homes that pro-modular architects trumpet are not any more "affordable" than stick built when considering a cost per square foot basis. In some instances paying $200/sf vs. $100/sf to a conventionally built home.
And why do these articles professing the coming surge of modular homes & construction resurface every few years and yet the surge never arrives? Is because of resistance of the trades or building professions or clients? Or is it that modular construction has a place but certainly not "every" place in construction?
Architects should be able to design to reduce as much waste as possible, modularity doesn't eliminate that waste just simply localizes and minimizes it. It has a place in architecture but I wouldn't be advocating for printing them out Ikea style and flat-shipped.
Plus it's difficult to get excited about the poetics of plastic laminates and MDF cabinet carcasses.
I work at a modular construction company and it seems more developers and architects are interested in the idea of doing modular projects. Modular is more common in Europe and has been used for quite some time. It's about time we start seeing modular in the US. BUT it should be used when it works for the project -- can the design work within the size constraints? Are there repeated box types? Material cost-wise, modular is not going to be much cheaper than stick-built but it can save a ton on time. We are building a multi-story mixed use building on a very high profile, heavily trafficked street where it would be very tricky to work, especially with hotels and other residential buildings adjacent to the property. We can crane boxes into place in 4 days and then crews will be able to work from the inside. I think that's worth getting excited about. As for MDF and plam -- that's client's choice (or lack thereof based on budget).
I advocate and support printing homes like cars. Modular or not, if they are done in a serial way, the cost can go down to levels of new cars or slightly above it. Technology is there, think of large presses, aligning, welding and riveting robots, cutters, etc... A car is more complicated to build because it also moves in high speeds and contains and integrates a motor, complicated electrical system with controls and more. Current methods of building a house is a lot of waste. Custom residential construction is overrated.
might work in your climate, but in freeze-thaw areas you need redundancy in joints, and you need to be able to repair small parts of the building after they wear out. And buildings are meant to last decades - cars maybe 5 years? who the hell wants to completely change their house every 5 years? unless there's no property ownership anymore... plus we don't build enough housing to justify the scale of that sort of operation - it would be one company producing all the housing.
the technology has existed for maybe 100 years - but the reason we don't do it is because it just doesn't make sense economically. we already "mass produce" mobile homes...
t o, I didn't mean it that much 1 to 1. Surely some adjustments must be made. You get the idea.. Cars also wear fast because they constantly move and vibrate..
I've had my Honda for 25 years and it's not "worn out" yet . . . far from it. Orhan's points about the relative simplicity of the (stationary) machine-for-living are well-taken, from my point of view.
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