Book Review: refabricating Architecture
refabricating Architecture by Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, published by McGraw-Hill Professional, 2003. Paperback, 175 pages. (Amazon)
Aiming to transform architectural design and construction from an on-site, ground-up, frame method to an off-site, prefabricated system, the authors are convincing in their argument, yet they also raise many unanswered questions. Using automobile, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries as models, the appropriateness of these to architecture and building construction is not directly addressed. As most cars, ships, and airplanes are replicated in great numbers to realize profits, most buildings are one-off endeavors. Any change towards greater prefabrication in building construction will happen through components, such as vanities, doorways, and exterior walls, as illustrated by the authors with actual built examples. By treating construction as a grouping of prefab (second tier) components over on-site assembly of first-tier parts, Kieran and Timberlake's point of view parallels one change in architectural production: CAD, and its evolution from lines and other stupid, vector-based graphic devices to groupings of intelligent systems.
This book illustrates the inherent slowness of architecture and its profession, in terms of both integrating new technologies and the actual construction of buildings. The book's prognostication - illustrated in the last chapter where Boeing hypothetically uses its now defunct assembly plant in Washington for the building trades - will eventually come true, it's just a matter of how soon and how architect's will respond.
Aiming to transform architectural design and construction from an on-site, ground-up, frame method to an off-site, prefabricated system, the authors are convincing in their argument, yet they also raise many unanswered questions. Using automobile, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries as models, the appropriateness of these to architecture and building construction is not directly addressed. As most cars, ships, and airplanes are replicated in great numbers to realize profits, most buildings are one-off endeavors. Any change towards greater prefabrication in building construction will happen through components, such as vanities, doorways, and exterior walls, as illustrated by the authors with actual built examples. By treating construction as a grouping of prefab (second tier) components over on-site assembly of first-tier parts, Kieran and Timberlake's point of view parallels one change in architectural production: CAD, and its evolution from lines and other stupid, vector-based graphic devices to groupings of intelligent systems.
This book illustrates the inherent slowness of architecture and its profession, in terms of both integrating new technologies and the actual construction of buildings. The book's prognostication - illustrated in the last chapter where Boeing hypothetically uses its now defunct assembly plant in Washington for the building trades - will eventually come true, it's just a matter of how soon and how architect's will respond.
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