The modular construction of residential skyscrapers will help rapidly in the great shift of the American suburban population to urban areas. It is also noted for providing a sufficient number of housing units to reduce social tensions in parts of the developing world where insufficient housing is a dangerous political issue.
The raunchy and ridiculous (yet often interesting!) fascination with shipping containers used as homes and office spaces shows that the public psyche approves of modular housing as a concept. Current container experiments may be fine as art projects or for disaster relief (although even that can be reconceptualized bottom-up and mass-produced), but actual modular construction needs to be thought of collectively.
Military-style techniques for rapid construction of modular housing were used to erect modern suburbs in the 1940s and 1950s, beginning with Levittown. Similar thinking and the application of elements of the military-industrial complex in conjunction with Chinese construction companies can quickly build new residential urban centers in North America during the ongoing population shift from the suburbs. And around the world in general for that matter.
Ideally, most of the module would be printed in factories for speed and consistency rather than being assembled by robotic hands like cars. Modified supercargo ships can also be fitted with printing factories to eliminate the need to load entire modules onto ships in the first place. Completed apartment buildings should allow rapid disassembly/removal of modules every 20 years or so (to sell/give away older modules to poorer parts of the world in the same way old cars are sold) and allow for replacement of the modules in case of damage. or fire.
The basic electrical, water, and insulation elements within the modules should also be easily accessible (for maintenance and modification related to appliances/furniture) and brought into the module during the printing process. Various insulating and protective coatings of nanomaterials should be sprayed as naturally as on doors in a car assembly line process.
Today it is relatively easy to plan a series of geometric module shapes to enable much larger living rooms and bedrooms to be built from a few special modules. We are not talking about a project of 50-story apartments built from completely uniform boxes. Like LEGO, diversity will come from the arrangement of various mass-produced module parts. Some parts will be much more ubiquitous than others (think of the equivalent of the 6-door main connecting module on the International Space Station that allows other parts to be linked together). But please don’t climb a shipping container for God’s sake!
Those people who choose to remain in rural areas need not be excluded from this process. There is no need to stay in increasingly dilapidated wooden structures. Currently, less high-tech modular homes are mostly used for rural and suburban homes, but they can be improved a bit in terms of materials from today’s cheap wood models. Let’s not forget that the price goes down with economies of scale.
The modules are built “grid ready” with solar panels and clean water from air systems. A buyer modifies a module before purchasing it in the same way as a Dell computer and its parts. Since the price of a laptop has gone from thousands of dollars to $35 (India also produced the cheapest car in the world), mass production will do the same for housing. Furniture and entertainment systems can be added, removed or reconfigured within individual modules. When one’s kitchen becomes obsolete, the whole thing can be sold like a used car and replaced while maintaining the rest of the house. This case is not made of wood. People buy mass-produced cars, yachts, and computers, and there’s no reason not to do the same for homes. It is time to apply space technology for hyper-efficient terrestrial life.
Some may complain that humans are not bees or ants to be “pigeonholed” like this. Well, current research shows that major urban human settlements are beginning to resemble huge ant hives. However, by understanding the process, we can direct it and intersperse concepts such as modularity to provide greater comfort, autonomy and options for the diversity of the living space. Currently, as the world continues at a breakneck pace of urbanization, we are seeing approximately 300 megacities rapidly fill with corporate real estate developments or government projects. Paradoxically, the modularity of a single housing unit or the modularity of bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, etc. allows visual architectural diversity through the reorganization of an apartment complex by apartment complex. Outresidential skyscrapers may seem relatively uniform 21st century glass and concrete tombs, but inside there would be all the desired diversity for families of various sizes and backgrounds.
More importantly, the internal diversity of the modular layout within the residential complex would require relatively similar amounts of time and electrical energy to erect (and, of course, much less time and energy currently used to build even simple and boring project-type condominiums). ).
In parts of the developing world, it would even be possible theoretically (if often not in practice) to transplant an entire small town or village into a residential complex within an urban area with an internal modular layout that caters to the social dynamics of the entire town. . In areas such as India and China, where thousands of villages have to be relocated due to infrastructure development needs, such moves would be aided by the flexibility afforded by modular housing and would preserve social relationships in a strange, new and unfamiliar urban environment. a stranger. Modular construction can even reduce social anomie if done correctly.
The construction of modular housing units has to be dramatically faster than the increase in the global annual birth rate. This means a series of massive assembly sites by deepwater ports. Old or modified military shipbuilding facilities serve as good springboards. For example, if Scotland declares independence from the UK in 2014 and expels the Trident submarine fleet, the empty area would be perfect for a modular setup serving along the coast of the North Sea region.
Whenever a slum is destroyed (as was the case with the Rio Favela in Rio de Janeiro recently to make room for World Cup infrastructure), modular units must be brought in as quickly as possible to reclaim the hearts and minds of the locals. The more authoritarian and therefore faster governments in Beijing and Moscow will probably (unfortunately) popularize this concept first before it takes off in the West. The West can get ahead (thesis possibly oversimplified “ant hive” efforts in the East) with a large-scale modular housing unit under the cover of environmentalism, green energy, smart grid integration, building innovation centers, etc.
The modular home must be sold as:
one) A public health issue (rodent reduction, filth, spread of disease)
two) A public safety issue through crime reduction/prevention (through increased psychological quality of life)
3) An economic issue (connecting the rural and urban population to the most efficient networks of energy, information and public services)
4) An environmental issue (scrap and recycle older, less efficient and less insulated homes)
5) A governance problem to create better social cohesion and possibly allow better monitoring of the census to serve the populations politically.
We can hope that once the concept catches on sufficiently, we will see apartment complex designs that go far beyond the dreams of Scandinavian planners for government projects in the 1960s and 1970s. modernist, paint it bright colors, cram it full of poor people and hope for the best.
What needs to be considered in the future is the generational renewal of the modules, the constant adaptation, experimentation and application of the newest mass production practices for the construction of modules that would allow for further renewal and experimentation. inside modules when it comes to changing the interior space, walls, furniture and appliances.
