Chunking the future.REFABRICATING ARCHITECTURE: HOW MANUFACTURING METHODOLOGIES ARE POISED TO TRANSFORM BUILDING CONSTRUCTION By Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake. London: McGraw-Hill. 2004. [pounds sterling]13.99 This book starts with an architect waking from an 80-year dream to find sleep. 'All appears to be different yet is in fact the same. Beneath the veneer of the new is an all too familiar world. Appearance has triumphed over substance.' This start echoes Williams Morris' News from Nowhere (1893), and refers directly to Le Corbusier's Vers une Architecture. Refabricating Architecture examines how the manufacturing progress of the twentieth century could inform the delivery and quality of architecture, specifically the benefits of offsite manufacturing. It is a creative response to John Egan's Rethinking Construction (1998), which arguably misunderstood the development of manufacturing in America, and reiterated a call for standardisation when technology of fabrication fabrication (fab´rikā´sh  n),n the construction or making of a restoration. can readily provide affordable bespoke be·spoke v. Past tense and a past participle of bespeak. adj. 1. Custom-made. Said especially of clothes. 2. Making or selling custom-made clothes: a bespoke tailor. or mass customised components. The authors' approach is much more sophisticated. A benefit of this book is that it has added to the language of prefabrication prefabrication, in architectural construction, a technique whereby large units of a building are produced in factories to be assembled, ready-made, on the building site. The technique permits the speedy erection of very large structures. and offsite manufacturing, quilting quilting, form of needlework, almost always created by women, most of them anonymous, in which two layers of fabric on either side of an interlining (batting) are sewn together, usually with a pattern of back or running (quilting) stitches that hold the layers and chunking their way to substantive and durable architecture. Chunking is taken from the automotive industry The automotive industry is the industry involved in the design, development, manufacture, marketing, and sale of motor vehicles. In 2006, more than 69 million motor vehicles, including cars and commercial vehicles were produced worldwide. and is the creation of large modular elements, that are fully integrated but have no restrictions in form. The roofs of Richard Rogers' new Antwerp Law Courts were chunked in an Antwerp shipyard and taken to site by barge. The book sets out the advantages of using complete three-dimensional project models, as used by the aerospace industries, and how this could return the architect to the centre of the process controlling the generative geometry. The book states that the car industry delivers on cost, quality and time rather than the tradition within construction that suggests only one of this trinity can be prioritised. This is a powerful new paradigm New Paradigm In the investing world, a totally new way of doing things that has a huge effect on business. Notes: The word "paradigm" is defined as a pattern or model, and it has been used in science to refer to a theoretical framework. for the construction industry. The authors are rare examples of architects who practise, teach and write about architecture. They are researchers and reflective practitioners. This model of practice reforms architectural education and informs the built environment. The book was in part funded by the American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Organized in 1857, the Institute conducts various activities and programs to support the profession and enhance its public image, including periodically awarding the AIA with research undertaken by Kieran Timberlake Associates and it includes exemplars from their postgraduate research studio at University of Pennsylvania (body, education) University of Pennsylvania - The home of ENIAC and Machiavelli. http://upenn.edu/. Address: Philadelphia, PA, USA. . Anyone considering the design of their next project should buy a copy of Refabricating Architecture and evaluate the benefits of offsite manufacturing. The next generation of architects in our schools of architecture have already seized this opportunity. |
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