Frank Gehry on Building Information Modeling

"Ahead of the Curve," Frank Gehry on technology and the future of the building industry in the Financial Times. Great article and an interesting quote, "The next generation of architects is going to draw right on the machine, I am obsolete."

Wood 2.0: mass timber and the tall buildings of tomorrow

Great to see the growing interest in massive timber buildings in North America. A good article here from Arstechnica. Great to see Hans-Erik Blomgren from the Arup office in Seattle heavily quoted. Here is a link to a video showing Hans-Erik Blomgren and the architect Joe Mayo making a presentation on digitally fabricated solid wood wall buildings to the Seattle Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee.


And be sure to download the free report on "Tall Wood" from the architect Michael Green.

9-story timber building in the UK - Stadthaus - and why we build with wood

A great video and a great project. Architect Andrew Waugh discusses the building and why wood is, in so many ways, the ideal building material. More information here from StructureMag and at the architect's website.

30 stories in 15 days. In China, Watch and Think.

This video is generating a lot of attention on the web. More coverage here and here.

This story continues to get more interesting, now this is floating around the web, "200 story Prefab for 100,000 People Can Be Built in 2 Months."

Alchemy Architects Video on Prefab's Potential

I have always liked the work of Alchemy Architects and just discovered this video which is very popular on youtube with over 280,000 views.

David Celento and Dwellings for the Digital Nomad - Jump Box

Interesting indeed. More info here.

Robots - The Future of Building?

The Fabricate 2011 Conference, hosted by the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, showcased the installation 'Stratifications' by Gramazio & Kohler, Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich. 'Stratifications' uses a multiple-axis robot on a caterpillar base to perform real-time construction, combining digital design and methods in fabrication that are not possible with traditional manual building methods. This is the first time that this approach to building has been seen in the UK. Designed and realised by Gramazio & Kohler, Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich (in cooperation with Bachmann Engineering AG, Zofingen) Further information: UCL Bartlett: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/ Gramazio & Kohler: http://www.dfab.arch.ethz.ch Ruairi Glynn: http://www.aac.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/people/ruairi/ Bob Sheil: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/research/architecture/profiles/Sheil.htm

Tedd Benson on the Open-Built Strategy

One of the building industry's leading innovators, Tedd Benson of Bensonwood, speaks about his work with Open-Built and about innovation (and the lack of it) in the industry.




Tedd discusses his open-built system at length and how this system is derivative of Andrea Palladio's work in the 16th century.

Because he views the world from a builder/fabricator perspective, he defines building information modeling as pre-building a structures digitally (as opposed to a more common view of BIM as being a particular cad authoring application) and then fabricating them using CNC. I share his opinion (and frustration) that all other industries have been using an integrated design-optimize-fabricate-assemble process yet it remains largely unknown in the building sector.

Tedd uses a lot of European technologies including Cadwork design/manufacturing software and purchased one of the first Hundegger CNC lines to be used in the U.S.

He is working with researchers at MIT on the Open Prototype Initiative but does state at minute 4:25 of the video "I stopped doing research in this country in the late 1980s. Really in fact, to be honest with you, there is not much good going on in America in building technology."

Quite a statement from one of the leading innovators in residential construction.

Squeezing Costs, Builders Take a New Look at Prefab

The New York Times published another article on Prefab on June 14.



The Modules at Templetown, a prefab student housing complex in Philadelphia.


The article focuses primarily on the economics of prefab in the commercial sector but doesn't cover residential, even thought many of the same process efficiencies apply. It also doesn't dive into how fabrication is a greener way to build - although that topic is frequently debated elsewhere, and often with very little reference to supportive data.

The 34-story Atlantic Tower project in Brooklyn covered in a previous article is briefly mentioned. Great to see ongoing discussion focused on cost-savings - and even perspectives on how efficiency and change are perceived as threatening by some in the industry. The Mcgraw-Hill SmartMarket Report published on May 11 on Prefabrication and Modularization: Increasing Productivity in the Construction Industry, is based on survery data of people in the industry and makes very clear how quickly fabrication is growing and how desired it is by nearly all sectors.

As a building company we focus on actually building and demonstrating that fabrication is good business and an enabling technology for the industry. The proof is in the buildings we construct.

For those fighting the inevitable, I highly recommend watching this video of a 15-story hotel being assembled in China in two days. The builder of the Atlantic Tower became fascinated by it and is now pushing fabrication in the U.S. Thought-provoking indeed. Watch it below.

Treehugger Debate: Is Prefab a Greener Way to Build?

Watch live streaming video from treehuggerlive at livestream.com

The debate continues - from May 26, 2011

Comments can be found at the treehugger site here.

Onebuild - New Prefab Company in Oregon

Dale Sperling, formerly of UNICO properties, is profiled in today's Seattle Times. He purchased the assets of bankrupt Transform - "for 15 cents on the dollar" - of Bellingham and Mount Vernon, Washington and moved the CNC lines to Klamath Falls, Oregon. The company website is now up and Dale stated in the article that the first sale is expected by the end of May. More coverage here from the Daily Journal of Commerce.


Great to see another prefab entrepreneur in the Pacific Northwest promoting fabrication. I very much look forward to their success - we would like to purchase wall panels from them when they are ready.

Prefab Redux - another look at green prefab

From the Seattle Business Magazine April issue, "Prefab Redux"

Great to revisit the topic now that the hype has withered away. Such a shame that there is still so little discussion about how the majority of high-performance homes constructed to the strict passivhaus / passive house and Swiss Minergie performance standards are prefab. Then again, the Swiss, Germans, and Austrians are years ahead in integrating applied buildings science into the design-fabricate-construct process for high-performance building and even that is not generally recognized within the North American building community so of course there is little awareness about how they achieve and scale the process.

Report on global market for prefabricated housing

The full report cost $4500. A freehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif summary is available here. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

It would be a great read I am sure, but I do wonder about how they define prefab.

Prefab - a good, almost 200 page, online document

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Document created by Tim Keepers

The frustrating history of Prefab in the U.S.

John Caputo wrote a great academic paper on prefab while a student at Harvard. This is a great resource for architects exploring prefab - if only I could convince more of them to read it before sending us their sketchup and revit models.