The popularity of pre-designed and prefabricated houses is growing, moving much of the construction process to factories. While countries like Singapore, Australia and the UK are adopting modular construction to deal with housing and labor shortages, Nordic countries like Sweden already build 90% of their single-family homes from prefabricated wood.
Despite this growing interest, off-site construction is not a new concept. In fact, the method has been present throughout history: in 43 AD, the Roman army moved prefabricated fortresses to England, while Japan has used pre-assembled wood for more than a thousand years.
However, it was not until after World War II that one of the greatest efforts in prefabricated housing took place in the United States. While this provided vulnerable groups with higher quality housing solutions, the method was not immune from criticism. The idea of housing as a standardized and repetitive product – and not as an elaborate and personalized project – was heavily criticized, resulting in its commercial failure. On the contrary, now prefabricated construction is prevailing in the market, being applied not only in single-family homes, hospitality and health spaces, but also in some of the tallest buildings in the world.
Why this growing interest in prefabricated construction?
The answer is simple: now we can do it better. In this automated technological age, innovative digital tools are making prefabrication easier. Design and construction are often structured and digitized around BIM, generating an accurate and integrated digital representation of a building throughout its life cycle – and enabling multidisciplinary actors to work together in a single intelligent process.
At the same time, open source allows users from anywhere in the world to download the design of their favorite house, while e-commerce platforms such as Amazon or Alibaba can send prefabricated materials directly to the construction site. Instead of making standard and repetitive buildings for different users, these new technologies allow clients to participate and let the buildings be adapted to their diverse needs.
