Undertaking a work of architecture utilizing modular construction is, in most cases, a design project dominated, or at least driven by, the most technical aspects of architecture. Technical aspects which haven't been completely figured out yet. Rather than making the decision to use a pre-determined structural system in the project before going through the design process, my thesis offers an example of how a more traditional and balanced approach can improve resulting buildings. In addition, rather than allowing the technology of the module to create the form of the building, show how a thorough study of program and form can influence the structure, even in an endeavor which usually requires such hard-nosed engineering. / Master of Architecture

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This is an investigation of a mobile prefabrication factory´s competitiveness and profitability which also will result in a suggestion for a design of the factory. The mobile prefabrication factory is an idea of a new concept for production which is meant to be used in the manufacture of slab. The main intention with this concept is that by using a fast established prefabrication factory to produce elements near the construction site, thus avoiding transport from the factory to the building site. This means not only an environmental and economic gain, but also that you can avoid risking damage the elements which often occur during transportation. The contractor is owner of the mobile prefabrication factory and can thus avoid long waiting times and cyclicality. These are parameters that often can be a concern when using prefabricated element from factory´s off-site. When the building is finished, the prefabrication factory is able to be packed onto trucks, moved, and reestablished close to next building site. The portable production capacity also means that production can be kept close to the product development and can therefore quickly test new solutions, thus this concept facilitating a continuous improvement.   After a rough estimate of the cost for the establishment, operation and maintenance turned out that the mobile prefabrication factory needs to be established by large projects that require more than 7 970 m2 of slab in order to recoup these expenses. Then to recoup the investment cost of 5, 64 million crones the project must have a need for more than these 7 970 m2 of slab. Counting on a life expectancy of 30 years for the mobile factory, the factory needs to produce 1 568 m2 of slab á year, in addition to the slab required for accrued cost for establishment.

This thesis addresses innovation in affordable housing. Many people face homelessness or suffer from the burden of renting a house that they cannot afford. In Boston, Massachusetts only 35% of the population are homeowners, resulting in more people renting in the city if they manage to find housing there at all. The increasing cost of housing in the United States presents a significant obstacle for immigrant families, many of whom are already struggling to make a living due to language barriers and limited access to employment opportunities. As housing prices continue to rise across the country, immigrant families face mounting challenges in securing safe and affordable housing, which can result in overcrowding, homelessness, and other adverse outcomes that exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities. To address the housing problem this research engages the solution of high-quality affordable housing for immigrant families in Chelsea, MA (a suburban neighborhood of Boston) by analyzing density and methods of prefabrication. Along with the solution of affordability, the intellectual node of the thesis also discusses the importance of suburbia and its advantage vi of providing a nurturing community. This thesis intends to develop certain functional parameters of design using a Prefabricated Panelized Approach. The prefabricated design for affordability approach provides a technique which can save time and money using off-site manufacturing of products and on-site assembly. This kind of development offers an opportunity to optimize the construction process and an efficient way to build affordable housing. Through this approach, the thesis intends to provide opportunities for home ownership, promote a sense of community among immigrant families, and offer language support to facilitate their growth.

In western countries, we are now living in a period of economic prosperity. This has undermined in a certain way the “world’s balances” in terms of social, economic and well-being equilibrium. In particular, well-being grows in parallel with its side effects: it allows the population to grow, which generates a rise of the resources need, with related risk of pauperization of the planet. The two main aspects of the current world’s living system crisis are climate change and widespread poverty, even and mainly in terms of lack of housing. Until some years ago one was the cause of the other: the building sector is the most energy consumer and CO2 emitter. Anyway, thanks to the contemporary knowledge and technology, this trend is inverted: it is now quite simple, and in several countries compulsory, to realize NZEB or ZEB constructions. However, especially in growing countries, the building industry is yet too slow to meet the contemporary changes which are consistently faster and pressing. The main theme is now to explore the possibility of generating a new building system which can be fast in construction, adaptable to changes and completely fade away. It must respond either to growing needs or to change during the time. All focusing on very low energy consumption in use and to production/disposal phases.

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If we look at the construction industry, particularly the modular single-family construction industry, we often see that the design stage is distinctly separate from the construction and fabrication stages. This separation has been occurring for some time now, however, there is often a noticeable lack of understanding of the constraints in linking architectural design to modular construction for single-family housing. In addition, no framework exists which seeks to support overcoming these constraints for the architectural design process while simultaneously bringing knowledge of fabrication, materials selection, and modular construction to the early stage of design. Also, there is a lack of knowledge of fabrication and modular construction constraints by many architects. This research intended to focus upon mapping the design and manufacturing processes for a specific scale of projects: residential single-family units. The research also aimed to understand the relationships among design, the role of emerging technologies, and manufacturing within the modular home construction industry in order to develop a design process that is based upon mass customization, rather than mass production. Thus, qualitative research methods based upon a grounded theory approach were used for evaluating, capturing, and structuring knowledge. To achieve the greatest possible amount of useful information, case studies of on-site visits to manufactured housing production facilities and structured, in-depth, open-ended interviews of architects, engineers, production managers, business managers, and other knowledge-holders within the manufactured modular housing industry were performed. The aim of this research was to map the design and modular homes manufacturing processes in an effort to better understand the relationships between these two domains. The Integration Definition (IDEF0) for Function Modeling was used as a graphical presentation technique. The goal of using such a graphical technique was, first, to understand and analyze the functions of the existing "As-is" design-manufacture communication process; and second, to enhance and improve the communication and productivity performances among people working in the design, manufacturing, and production sectors. Using this graphical modeling method assisted with mapping the design and modular manufacturing processes, including organizations, teams, decisions, actions, and activities. Through this mapping process, strategies to improve the emergent relationships were proposed as a new "To-be" design and manufacturing framework for modular single-family housing projects. / Ph. D.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur informationsflödet på en prefabriceringsfabrik fungerar, från konstruktion till produktion. Mer konkret inriktar den sig till att identifiera effektiva och ineffektiva steg i flödet samt förbättringsmöjligheter för att kunna optimera personalens dagliga arbete. Eftersom ingen tidigare kunskap kring var problemen inom informationsflödet på fallföretaget fanns, kunde inte någon teoretiskt koppling formuleras innan fallstudien var genomförd. Fallstudien utgjordes av metoderna observation och intervju där kvalitativ data insamlades. Observationen genomfördes för att kartlägga processen av informationsflödet på fallföretaget. Intervjuerna genomfördes för att få de anställdas åsikter och hitta vart problemen låg. Efter fallstudien kunde teoriområdena klargöras och en litteraturstudie utfördes. De problemområden som framgick utifrån undersökningen grundar sig främst i tidsbrist. Detta bland annat på grund av tidskrävande aktiviteter som manuell hantering vid uppförandet av tillverkningsritningar och revideringar i fallföretagets planeringar. Förbättringsförslaget författarna presenterar är därmed en uppgradering av ritprogram samt implementering av ett planeringssystem. Tidsbristen ansågs även leda till brister inom kommunikationen. Författarna anser att det, av olika skäl, är viktigt att behålla den personliga kontakten och komplettera denna med system. Studien ämnar sig till att bidra med kunskap kring hur ett informationsflöde på en prefabriceringsfabrik kan vara utformat. Den stärker teorier kring varför det är viktigt att behålla den fysiska kommunikationen när uppdaterade system implementeras. Den har vidare bidragit med förslag kring vilka delar som kan effektiviseras inom ett informationsflöde där prefabelement tillverkas. Arbetet begränsades till att enbart genomföras på en prefabriceringsfabrik och kollar bara på flödet mellan konstruktion till produktion. Inga ekonomiska aspekter har beaktats och endast ett företag har deltagit i undersökningen. / The study aimed to investigate how the information flow at an off-site fabrication is working, from design-stage to production. More specifically, it focus on identifying effective and ineffective parts in the information flow, along with improvement opportunities to optimize the personnel’s daily work. Since the authors had no knowledge about where the problems in the information flow at the company was, they were not able to create a theoretical framework before the case study was made. The case study involved observation and interviews. The observation was made to identify the process and information flow at the company. The interviews were made to get the knowledge about the personnel’s opinion and to locate where the problems in the information flow occurred. With the case study as a base the theoretical framework could be made with a literature study. The problem areas that emerged from the case study are all mainly based from the lack of time. This is partly due to the time-consuming activities such as manual handling in the making of production technical drawing and revision of planning documents. The improvement proposal the authors present is to upgrade the computer-aided design software and to implement a planning system. The authors also consider the lack of time as a reason for shortcomings in the communication. The improvement proposal the authors present for this is to keep the personal contact and to supplement it with a system. The study intends to contribute with knowledge about how an information flow at an off-site fabrication may look like. It reinforces theories about why it is important to keep the personal communication when a system upgrade are implemented. The study has also contributed in proposals in which parts of the information flow that have potential to become more effective at an off-site fabrication. The study was limited to an off-site fabrication and only the information flow between design-stage and production was included in the study. No economic aspects were considered and only one company has participated in the study.