Future of Making Series: Architecture, Assembled
Facit’s CNC mill, transported to home sites in a shipping container, cuts customized pieces for homes.
30 August 2017
New fabrication methods mean that
buildings can be made faster and more
efficiently—breathing new life into ideas about design and construction.
Architects, designers, and developers have long struggled to streamline
the complex process of building. Now, advances in digital and industrial
technology are enabling several companies to integrate best practices in
fabrication and assembly to create more efficient and sustainable
production methods and more durable and attractive buildings. This is
taking place on vastly different scales, from skyscrapers to office
buildings to homes in rural England, Scotland, and Canada.
London design firm Facit Homes uses digital tools and modern
manufacturing techniques to fabricate building components—many of them
on-site in a portable facility housed in a shipping container. The
pieces are then assembled on-site.
The D-process, as it is called, begins in the firm’s East London studio.
Just as with many architects, designers using
building information
modeling (BIM) software create a 3D digital model of the home according
to the customer’s budget, site specifications, and design preferences.
At Facit, though, the homes are made not from 2x4s and other standard
parts, but from a system of precisely designed components that the firm
itself makes using the latest fabrication tools.
Construction gets underway after a shipping container with a CNC
router—a computer-controlled cutting machine—arrives at the site. The
design is downloaded to the router, and the machine mills raw wood
panels into modular building blocks for the frame, roof, and other
components. (Metal stairs and some other complex pieces are manufactured
at Facit and brought to the site.) The router etches a part number into
each modular block to guide builders as they assemble the pieces,
Lego-like, using large rubber mallets to connect the joints and nail
modules into place. In a final step, windows and kitchen and bathroom
fixtures are added. Everything fits snugly into place because the router
has accurately carved out the right locations for sockets, ducts, light
switches, and electric cables.
D-Process resembles the assembly line of a contemporary manufacturing
facility in which everything is derived from a single digital model.
Like an iPhone, BMW, or jetliner, each Facit home is bolted together in
a highly controlled, fluid system. “We believe in manufacturing, and so
does the customer because they want the reassurance that every part will
be perfect,” says Bruce Bell, who cofounded Facit Homes in 2009 and is
an industrial designer by training. “That is what contemporary
manufacturing does; we applied that to building homes.”
The past century has seen many versions of prefab buildings—from the
Sears Roebuck and Co. “kit houses” sold between 1908 and 1940, to
architect Moshe Safdie’s stacked box Habitat ’67 at the Montreal World
Exposition to the wave of prefab modern homes that Dwell magazine and
others helped publicize in the early 21st century. These designs
prompted public discourse but did not spark a prefab construction boom.
By 2008, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York City staged the
exhibition “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” curator
Barry Bergdoll wrote, “The relationship between the drawing board and
the finished product has never been more dynamic, but the potential of
prefabrication has not yet come to full fruition.” Today, companies like
Facit reflect growing interest in new types of prefabricated structures
that incorporate cutting-edge technologies and more daring and
customizable design.
A finished Facit residence.
Bell says that efforts to devise an “ultimate building system” using
prefabricated or modular units ultimately fail because such designs need
to be standardized so they are cost effective. Inevitably, this leads to
“boxy, dull, and routine” designs that disappoint customers who want
homes with unique features. He considers Facit’s D-Process the next
stage in the evolution of prefabrication because it is a “digital form
of craftsmanship” that combines technology, customization, and
traditional building skills. “There’s no human interference between the
design and the object as it moves from computer model to a physical
thing,” he explains. “But then tradesmen take over to finish the
installation.”
At every Facit construction site, electricians, plumbers, and plasterers
work with the company’s project management staff to oversee
construction. Sometimes even the homeowner pitches in as special
features like a laser-cut circular staircase, solar window shade, or
front door canopy are lifted into place. But for the most part, Facit
does all the fabrication and construction work.
Facit has built 15 homes, ranging in size from around 1,000 square feet
to 5,300 square feet, in rural areas and suburbs in Britain and Denmark.
Bell says a big attraction is the homes’ sustainable features:
FSC-certified wood, 100 percent recycled fiber insulation that fills the
modular boxes, and built-in mechanical heat-recovery ventilation. And
because everything is fabricated on site, there’s less waste and lower
labor and shipping costs. Yet Facit homes are not a solution for
affordable housing: Depending on the configuration and features, the
homes cost between $325,000 and $2 million, well above the average
$260,000 price of a home in the U.K.
That could change if digital design, fabrication, and assembly methods
are more widely adopted across the architecture and construction
industries, creating economies of scale. Eventually, Bell says, “What we
do will become less uncommon, but only if designers and manufacturing
experts work together.”
The idea of bringing cutting-edge manufacturing techniques to customized
construction methods has captured the imagination of other companies,
too, including ConXtech in Pleasanton, California, and BONE Structure in
Montreal.
ConXtech, a construction technology company, developed a unique digital
design and fabrication process for the small connectors that support a
structural steel framing system. The ConX system was conceived around
simple, configurable parts that make it easier to assemble the beams and
columns that hold up multistory buildings. This allows the company’s
integration team, architects, and engineers to collaborate at a very
early stage of the design process; using BIM, they can create a
dimensionally and spatially accurate building framework.
Introducing innovation into established industries like construction
engineering can be a challenge. For ConXtech, that meant establishing
its own 122,000-square-foot factory in 2003 in Hayward, California, and
equipping it with specialized CNC mills to manufacture the connectors,
and robots that weld its lower-and-locking mechanism to standard steel
beams. Once the materials are on-site, the structure can be put together
safely and rapidly, “like an Erector set,” says Bob Simmons, ConXtech’s
cofounder and CEO.
The company also needed to set up a full-scale testing facility in 2008
to prove that its connection technology could withstand seismic events
and other stresses. At the time, Simmons recalls, “there was no clear
path to accepting our technology because the building code changes so
slowly.” In 2010, after extensive testing, a chapter was added to the
American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) codebook based on
ConXtech’s testing results.
In a similar way, BONE Structure has disrupted the design and
construction industry with new processes and materials for making homes
and commercial buildings. “We really wanted to change the habitation
throughout the world,” says the company’s founder and CEO, Marc Bovet.
Bovet started BONE Structure in 2005 after trying to build his own home,
concluding that the way we build today is chaotic and fundamentally
broken. “I think the caveman figured it out much better,” he said.
“Since then we’ve been literally going backwards.” Bovet, who previously
worked in the aerospace and transportation industry, put together a team
to consider three critical issues facing the industry: the shortage of
specialized labor, including carpenters; endangered supplies of its main
natural resource, wood; and the need for greater environmental
responsibility, as 60 percent of construction waste now ends up in
landfills.
BONE Structure’s first home was made of wood, but the pieces were precut
by a CNC machine and assembled on-site according to plans that Bovet
says were “as precise as an IKEA furniture set.” However, this carefully
crafted construction strategy was foiled by humidity that caused the
wood to expand. So laser-cut galvanized steel—a much more inert
material—became the standard for BONE Structure. Not only can steel
withstand harsh Canadian weather conditions and seismic shocks (the
company is also building in California), but it also resists mold and
deterioration. Moreover, a steel-framed structure—which Bovet likens to
an airplane fuselage—does not require load-bearing walls, allowing
spacious interiors.
A BONE Structure home being assembled on site.
For the building process, Bovet insisted on an “idiotproof” construction
system based on collaboration, seamless technology, and
easy-to-assemble, precision-engineered parts. All team
members—architects, engineers, designers, and contractors—are involved
from the beginning to avoid any miscommunication and misinterpretation
of construction plans and design intent. “I want them to grasp what’s at
stake here,” Bovet explains, “to get a sense of the real responsibility
that what they are creating will be here for 150 or 200 years.” Each
building is custom designed on Revit and Inventor according to the
owner’s specifications and run through a series of tests, including an
energy-use analysis.
The design is sent to one of BONE Structure’s 15 manufacturing plants,
where 11-gauge steel beams are cut to size with preset openings for
electricity, ventilation, and heating components. The beams are shipped
to the site on flatbed trucks with little or no packaging (to reduce
waste) and assembled by builders using only battery-powered drills.
Every piece of the building clicks together, Bovet says, using Lego
blocks as an analogy—85 percent of the parts for every BONE Structure
building are identical. Once the steel shell is in place, polystyrene
panels and foam insulation are attached for a tight, energy-efficient
building envelope that can be designed to meet LEED, Passive House, or
Net Zero Energy specifications.
The innovations of all of these new building systems—integrating digital
design and manufacturing, durable materials, and environmental benefits—
will reshape the industry.
Part 3 of a 5-week series from the
new Future of Making book by Tom Wujek. Stories will be posted here on
In The Fold and on Redshift. To learn more about the book, visit
www.autodesk.com/future-of-making-book.
--ENDS--
Source: Autodesk - www.autodesk.com.au
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