Book: Refabricating Architecture

Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake of KieranTimberlake Associates wrote "Refabricating Architecture" in 2004 as part of a Research Fellowship awarded to them by the AIA in 2001. In this book, they examine the design and construction technologies and processes currently used in the building industry and then propose that architects and builders need to rethink the construction process to take advantage of modern advances in manufacturing, information sharing, and mass customization. They argue that today's architects have relinquished responsibility for assembly, product development, and materials research, resulting in a segmentation between design and construction that inhibits advances in the building industry.

Because this book is relatively brief, it presents some compelling ideas and examples but doesn't really go into a whole lot of detail how to go about implementing these changes. Like many architects interested in prefabrication, they argue that the automobile, aerospace, and shipbuilding industries provide good models for efficient and progressive manufacturing processes. Kieran and Timberlake are able to clearly and simply explain all the advantages that these model industries hold over the construction of but their proposed application to the building industry remains loose and idealistic. In the end it's the big ideas in this book that inspire a rethinking and "refabrication" of architecture.

Book: The Prefabricated Home

I just finished reading "The Prefabricated Home" by Colin Davies last night. It is by far the best book for architects to read about the history of prefabricated housing. Davies takes a critical look at the successes and failures of prefabricated housing and analyzes why architects have not been able to make any impact on one of affordable housing's most lucrative fields.

The tone of the book is set in the fourth paragraph:

"Although we think of architecture as being in some sense in charge of the activity of building, for 150 years or more the prefabricated house has managed perfectly well without architecture's guidance. Situated outside the architecture field, it has cheerfully ignored architectural law. The strength of the prefabricated house lies in its popularity, its cheapness and the industrial base from which it operates. These are precisely the areas in which modern architecture is the weakest. Modern architecture is unpopular, expensive and divorced from industrial production. That is why whenever it has tried to extend its field to include the territory of the prefabricated house it has failed and been forced to retreat."

While the book may feel negative and even anti-architect at times, it presents compelling reasons why architects have not been successful in prefabricated construction. Some books on prefab that I have read just glaze over the general history of prefab and then present pretty pictures with invariably positive descriptions about the buildings. Davies' book is a good reality check on all the hype surrounding modern prefab and at the same time provides some solid footing on how architects should proceed in the field of prefab housing. If you are interested in a deeper analysis of prefabricated architecture, I highly recommend that you check out this book.

The Prefabricated Home by Colin Davies

Image taken from Amazon.com