A prefabricated building, informally a prefab, is a building that is manufactured and constructed using prefabrication. It consists of factory-made components or units that are transported and assembled on-site to form the complete building. Various materials were combined to create a part of the installation process. [1]
Buildings have been built in one place and reassembled in another throughout history. This was especially true for mobile activities, or for new settlements. Elmina Castle, the first slave fort in West Africa, was also the first European prefabricated building in Sub-saharan Africa. [2] : 93 In North America, in 1624 one of the first buildings at Cape Ann was probably partially prefabricated, and was rapidly disassembled and moved at least once. John Rollo described in 1801 earlier use of portable hospital buildings in the West Indies. [3] Possibly the first advertised prefab house was the "Manning cottage". A London carpenter, Henry Manning, constructed a house that was built in components, then shipped and assembled by British emigrants. This was published at the time (advertisement, South Australian Record, 1837) and a few still stand in Australia. [4] One such is the Friends Meeting House, Adelaide. [5] [6] The peak year for the importation of portable buildings to Australia was 1853, when several hundred arrived. These have been identified as coming from Liverpool, Boston and Singapore (with Chinese instructions for re-assembly). [7] In Barbados the Chattel house was a form of prefabricated building which was developed by emancipated slaves who had limited rights to build upon land they did not own. As the buildings were moveable they were legally regarded as chattels. [8]
In 1855 during the Crimean War, after Florence Nightingale wrote a letter to The Times , Isambard Kingdom Brunel was commissioned to design a prefabricated modular hospital. In five months he designed the Renkioi Hospital: a 1,000 patient hospital, with innovations in sanitation, ventilation and a flushing toilet. [9] Fabricator William Eassie constructed the required 16 units in Gloucester Docks, shipped directly to the Dardanelles. Only used from March 1856 to September 1857, it reduced the death rate from 42% to 3.5%.
The world's first prefabricated, pre-cast panelled apartment blocks were pioneered in Liverpool. A process was invented by city engineer John Alexander Brodie, whose inventive genius also had him inventing the football goal net. The tram stables at Walton in Liverpool followed in 1906. The idea was not extensively adopted in Britain, however was widely adopted elsewhere, particularly in Eastern Europe.
Prefabricated homes were produced during the Gold Rush in the United States, when kits were produced to enable Californian prospectors to quickly construct accommodation. Homes were available in kit form by mail order in the United States in 1908. [10]
Prefabricated housing was popular during the Second World War due to the need for mass accommodation for military personnel. The United States used Quonset huts as military buildings, and in the United Kingdom prefabricated buildings used included Nissen huts and Bellman Hangars. 'Prefabs' were built after the war as a means of quickly and cheaply providing quality housing as a replacement for the housing destroyed during the Blitz. The proliferation of prefabricated housing across the country was a result of the Burt Committee and the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944. Under the Ministry of Works Emergency Factory Made housing programme, a specification was drawn up and bid on by various private construction and manufacturing companies. After approval by the MoW, companies could bid on Council led development schemes, resulting in whole estates of prefabs constructed to provide accommodation for those made homeless by the War and ongoing slum clearance. [11] Almost 160,000 had been built in the UK by 1948 at a cost of close to £216 million. The largest single prefab estate in Britain [12] was at Belle Vale (South Liverpool), where more than 1,100 were built after World War 2. The estate was demolished in the 1960s amid much controversy as the prefabs were very popular with residents at the time.
Prefabs were aimed at families, and typically had an entrance hall, two bedrooms (parents and children), a bathroom (a room with a bath) — which was a novel innovation for many Britons at that time, a separate toilet, a living room and an equipped (not fitted in the modern sense) kitchen. Construction materials included steel, aluminium, timber or asbestos cement, depending on the type of dwelling. The aluminium Type B2 prefab was produced as four pre-assembled sections which could be transported by lorry anywhere in the country. [13]
The Universal House (pictured left & lounge diner right) was given to the Chiltern Open Air Museum after 40 years temporary use. The Mark 3 was manufactured by the Universal Housing Company Ltd, Rickmansworth.
The United States used prefabricated housing for troops during the war and for GIs returning home. Prefab classrooms were popular with UK schools increasing their rolls during the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s.
Many buildings were designed with a five-ten year life span, but have far exceeded this, with a number surviving today. In 2002, for example, the city of Bristol still had residents living in 700 examples. [14] Many UK councils have been in the process of demolishing the last surviving examples of Second World War prefabs in order to comply with the British government's Decent Homes Standard, which came into effect in 2010. There has, however, been a recent revival in prefabricated methods of construction in order to compensate for the United Kingdom's current housing shortage.[ citation needed ]
Architects are incorporating modern designs into the prefabricated houses of today. Prefab housing should no longer be compared to a mobile home in terms of appearance, but to that of a complex modernist design. [15] There has also been an increase in the use of "green" materials in the construction of these prefab houses. Consumers can easily select between different environmentally friendly finishes and wall systems. Since these homes are built in parts, it is easy for a home owner to add additional rooms or even solar panels to the roofs. Many prefab houses can be customized to the client's specific location and climate, making prefab homes much more flexible and modern than before.
There is a zeitgeist or trend in architectural circles and the spirit of the age favors the small carbon footprint of "prefab".
The process of building pre-fabricated buildings has become so efficient in China that a builder in Changsha built a ten-storey building in 28 hours and 45 minutes. [16] [17]
Prefabricated construction generates less carbon footprint, improves energy use and efficiency, and produces less waste, making it more sustainable and environmentally friendly, and compliant with sustainable design standards. [18] [19]
The modular architecture allows, thanks to 3D modeling, the design and construction of the modular structure outside the site where it will be installed. [20] This offers several advantages such as more sustainable design, greater cost and time savings and standardization of design. [21] This is especially important for large-scale construction projects. [22]
Many eastern European countries had suffered physical damage during World War II and their economies were in a very poor state. There was a need to reconstruct cities which had been severely damaged due to the war. For example, Warsaw had been practically razed to the ground under the planned destruction of Warsaw by German forces after the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The centre of Dresden, Germany, had been totally destroyed by the 1945 Allied bombardment. Stalingrad had been largely destroyed and only a small number of structures were left standing.
Prefabricated buildings served as an inexpensive and quick way to alleviate the massive housing shortages associated with the wartime destruction and large-scale urbanization and rural flight.
McDonald's uses prefabricated structures for their buildings, and set a record of constructing a building and opening for business within 13 hours (on pre-prepared ground works). [23]
In the UK, the major supermarkets have each developed a modular unit system to shop building, based on the systems developed by German cost retailer Aldi and the Danish supermarket chain Netto. [24]
The large panel system building is a building constructed of large, prefabricated concrete slabs. Such buildings are often found in housing development areas.
A modular building is a prefabricated building that consists of repeated sections called modules. Modularity involves constructing sections away from the building site, then delivering them to the intended site. Installation of the prefabricated sections is completed on site. Prefabricated sections are sometimes placed using a crane. The modules can be placed side-by-side, end-to-end, or stacked, allowing for a variety of configurations and styles. After placement, the modules are joined together using inter-module connections, also known as inter-connections. The inter-connections tie the individual modules together to form the overall building structure.
Seacroft is an outer-city suburb/township consisting mainly of council estate housing covering an extensive area of east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It lies in the LS14 Leeds postcode area, around 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Leeds city centre.
Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. Some researchers refer it to “various materials joined together to form a component of the final installation procedure“.
Prefabricated homes, often referred to as prefab homes or simply prefabs, are specialist dwelling types of prefabricated building, which are manufactured off-site in advance, usually in standard sections that can be easily shipped and assembled. Some current prefab home designs include architectural details inspired by postmodernism or futurist architecture.
Manufactured housing is a type of prefabricated housing that is largely assembled in factories and then transported to sites of use. The definition of the term in the United States is regulated by federal law : "Manufactured homes are built as dwelling units of at least 320 square feet (30 m2) in size with a permanent chassis to assure the initial and continued transportability of the home." The requirement to have a wheeled chassis permanently attached differentiates "manufactured housing" from other types of prefabricated homes, such as modular homes.
Belle Vale is a district of south-east Liverpool, Merseyside, England and a Liverpool City Council Ward that covers both Belle Vale and Netherley.
Offsite construction refers to the planning, design, manufacture and assembly of building elements at a location other than their final installed location to support the rapid speed of, and efficient construction of a permanent structure. Such building elements may be prefabricated offsite in a different location and transported to the site or prefabricated on the construction site and then transported to their final location. Offsite construction is characterized by an integrated planning and supply chain optimization strategy. Offsite manufacturing (OSM), offsite production (OSP) and offsite fabrication (OSF) are terms used when referring primarily to the factory work proper.
Seacroft pre-dates the Domesday book, with evidence of a settlement in the area from the Neolithic Age. Seacroft remained largely unchanged for centuries as a small Yorkshire village, until in the 1950s the area was developed into Leeds' largest council estate. In the 1960s and 1970s the building of Whinmoor and Swarcliffe enclosed Seacroft within other suburbs.
The BISF house is a British steel framed house, designed and produced by the British Iron and Steel Federation, and erected around the country from 1946.
Carl Koch was a noted American architect. He was most associated with the design of prefabricated homes and development of the Techcrete building system.
Joseph Tanney is an American architect based in New York City. He is known for his work in prefabricated housing. He gained international attention with the Dwell Home, the winner of a 2003 international competition, which is considered a modern prefab icon.
Prefabs were a major part of the delivery plan to address the United Kingdom's post–World War II housing shortage. They were envisaged by war-time prime minister Winston Churchill in March 1944, and legally outlined in the Housing Act 1944.
Commercial Modular Buildings are code-compliant, non-residential structures that are 60% to 90% completed offsite in a factory-controlled environment. They are then transported or shipped to a final destination where the modules are then erected onto a concrete foundation to form a finished building. The word "modular" does not describe a building type or style; it simply describes a means of construction.
Renkioi Hospital was a pioneering prefabricated building made of wood, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel as a British Army military hospital for use during the Crimean War.
The Excalibur Estate was a post-war 1940s housing estate of 189 prefabricated houses in Catford, South London. The estate contained the last sizeable collection of post-war prefabricated houses in the United Kingdom. In 2011, Lewisham Council approved a plan to replace the prefabs with 371 houses, with demolition scheduled to begin in 2013. English Heritage has granted listed building status to six of the "prefab" houses. The proposed demolition led to campaigns by residents, English Heritage and the Twentieth Century Society to save the properties, with an unsuccessful legal challenge to prevent redevelopment, and a return to parkland, if they were demolished. Apart from the six with Grade II listing, all the buildings are due for demolition, and the redeveloped estate completed, by the mid 2020's.
A council house or council flat is a form of British public housing built by local authorities. A council estate is a building complex containing a number of council houses and other amenities like schools and shops. Construction took place mainly from 1919 after the Housing Act 1919 to the 1980s, with much less council housing built since then. There were local design variations, but they all adhered to local authority building standards. The Housing Acts of 1985 and 1988 facilitated the transfer of council housing to not-for-profit housing associations with access to private finance, and these new housing associations became the providers of most new public-sector housing. The characterisation of council houses as 'problem places' was key for leading this movement of transferring public housing stock to the private arena. By 2003, 36.5% of the social rented housing stock was held by housing associations.
USA House is a term used to refer to a United States government program to assemble American-manufactured prefabricated houses in the United Kingdom to alleviate that country's homeless problem in the 1940s. The scheme was known as Houses for Britain.
Swedish post-war prefabricated houses were a response to the housing shortage in Great Britain following the Second World War. 5,000 homes were built from kits made in Sweden and assembled on site. The first of these houses were built at Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, in January 1946. The Housing Act 1944 planned the building of 300,000 prefab houses in Britain over the next four years. They were to have a structural lifetime of between 10 and 15 years. In the end just over 150,000 were built. They were a gift of the Swedish government. They are an example of the use of "prefabs'" to deal with the post-war housing shortage in the UK. Many survive to this day and some have become listed buildings.
Resolution: 4 Architecture (RES4) is a ten-person architecture firm based in New York City, founded by architects Joseph Tanney and Robert Luntz in 1990. The firm is most recognized for their work on prefabricated housing and mass customization of the single-family house.