Prefabricated modular housing, Bangalore

Abstract

Industrialisation of the building process has remained the great unfulfilled promise of our time. The Waves of efficiency increases that have transformed the production of nearly every other product of the last century has had no parallel in the design and construction industry. In fact, in the last few decades, non-construction productivity has more than doubled whereas the construction sector has lagged behind due to its skewed organisational structure. Mass production has induced progress in all fields from automobiles to consumer products which we use daily. As a culture we have largely failed to deliver high performance and durable buildings at an affordable cost. This has vast societal consequences from homelessness to compromised living standards and the inefficient use of resources. To walk into a construction site today is to be surrounded by disorders. To manage a contemporary construction project is to be overwhelmed by weather and uncooperative or overly scheduled subcontractors, lack of accountability and poor craftsmanship. To a very real extent we build the same way today that we did thousands of years ago, by assembling materials and men at the site and figuring things out as we proceed. Compared to a well-run in-situ work, an industrialized/prefabricated building process offers two primary advantages: predictability and time savings. These can be so dramatic that they immediately translate into significant cost savings. Taking this as the premise from the age of prefabrication, this thesis is an attempt at exploring the opportunities associated with the application of prefabricated modular construction ideas to the housing sector.