Aurubis   The firm Aurubis sells prefabricated facade panels made of copper, excellent from an environmental point of view. They can be installed with the material’s natural finish or in a different texture, as well as pre-patinated.

Dom Architektów   Poland   The Polish firm Dom Architektow -- founded by the married couple Walenty Durka and Emilia Durka-Zielińskaha – has developed a timber system of modular dwellings. The DA House combines simplicity and prefabricated construction with recyclable and eco

Max Hacke Gustav Düsing   Germany   The organizational principle behind this project was based on the idea of a superstructure allowing for constant reconfiguration of the floor plan. The two-level, glass-clad building raised for the Technical University of Braunschweig, in the German

Zaha Hadid Architects Block Research Group   Italy   El prototipo de pasarela se construye con piezas de hormigón impreso en 3D sin armar, lo que asemeja su comportamiento a las estructuras tradicionales de piedra, resolviendo los esfuerzos a través de la geometría y no con la acumulación de materiales

Elisa Valero   Spain   Located on the outskirts of Granada, in the Almanjáyar neighborhood, this church presents a jagged profile with seven skylights on a sawtooth roof projecting a play of lights and colors inside. Developed over a span of fourteen years, the project aim

Estudio Albar   Spain   As per Passivhaus standards for maximizing energy efficiency, in consumption terms this residence qualifies for the NZEB (Nearly Zero Energy Building) certificate, impacting very little on the environment. It has a fully industrialized timber structu

System Arquitectura   Spain   The new logistical center of Mayoral, a children’s clothing brand, rises on its corporate campus, on the site of the old company Interhorce (Industrial Textiles del Guadalhorce) in the city of Málaga, beside the listed building by Ramón Vázquez Molez

Scalar Architecture    United States   In Connecticut, the New York firm Scalar Architecture – led by the Madrid architect Julio Salcedo – built this 200-square-meter modular residence for a large family on the hills of Mill Brook Valley, in the lower Berkshires mountains. Taking into acc

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Netherlands   The modular wood system developed by Circlewood – a collective of architects, engineers, builders, and researchers headed by OMA/David Gianotten – came about as a response to the City of Amsterdam’s Innovation Partnership School Buildings program of

Parallect Design   China   Southwest of Jiujiang, in Jiangxi Province, China, is this complex consisting of 19 prefabricated cabins, a multifunctional hall, and a 24-meter-tall observation tower. The Chinese firm Parallect Architecture Studio received the commission with no re

Hsü Rudolphy   Chile   This residential building made of shipping containers, meant for young users, is a 1,400-square-meter, 4-floor construction raised with 6 prefabricated blocks of stairs and 70 recycled containers, which dynamically alternate to form little balconies.

Andrade Morettin Arquitetos   Brazil   Located on the north coast of São Paulo, this 240-square-meter summer house stands a few meters from the sea, hidden amid a lush forest. The neutral volume opens to the outdoors with sliding doors, and lets daylight in through panels of polycarbonate

Sauerbruch Hutton   Germany   This modular office structure for the German Bundestag reacts to the monumentality of its surroundings in Berlin’s parliamentary district with great simplicity: a straight-forward H-shaped plan based on prefabrication and modularity. While the southe

Sauerbruch Hutton   Germany   Berlin metropolitan School is housed in a pair of existing Plattenbau, or prefabricated, structures from the GDR era that were erected in 1987. Three building wings form part of a block and create a generous, protected school yard. The project extend

Ignacio Rojas Hirigoyen The Andes House    Chile   Designed by the architect Ignacio Rojas Hirigoyen with The Andes House, this project seeks to provide an affordable solution to the problem of scarce decent housing that afflicts Chile and Latin America at large, through a modular building system tha

E2A   Switzerland   The left bank of Lake Zurich is characterized by a series of individual spatial compartments. The location of the water police at Mythenquai lies precisely on the perimeter of two such compartments: the promontory occupied by the Zurich Rowing Club a

Totem Arquitectos Asociados (TAAs)   Spain   The Carabanchel district is the location of this project of the Municipal Housing and Land Company (EMVS), an agency under Madrid’s City Hall. Close to huge urban voids like the Cuatro Vientos airport, which counteract the city’s heat island effect i

Materia   Mexico   The Montes Molina country house in Mérida, capital of the Mexican state of Yucatán, was built in 1906. A century later it opened to the public as a house-museum. In 2015 the firm Materia – founded by Gustavo Carmona and Lisa Beltrán – raised an adjac

Nendo   Japan   Established in 2005 by Oki Sato, the multidisciplinary studio Nendo designed an archive in which to store its collection of products, furniture, and artworks, with a guesthouse attached. Using elongated box-shaped concrete structures that commonly go

Summary   Portugal   In a remote spot of the Portuguese village of Paradinha (Alvarenga), in Aveiro District, eleven cabins are carefully arranged around existing trees, following the natural topography. The place being hard to reach warranted simplifying the building pr

Zaga arquitectura   Spain   Amid farming fields bordered by trees and paths, with Mount Canigou as backdrop, stands this dwelling built by Zaga arquitectura (Nicolás Markuerkiaga, Mariana Plana, Maribel González), a 110-square-meter bungalow broken up into two volumes clad in w

Fenwick Iribarren Architects   Qatar   Since their invention and standardization in the mid-20th century, metallic containers have optimized shipping transportation, ushering in a new era of global logistics and commercial exchange. Later on, new approaches to architectural seriation and

Studio Muoto   Belgium   The new concert venue reflects the post-industrial identity of the neighborhood. Evoking warehouse architecture, it is designed as a large meccano of prefabricated structures that can be assembled, taken apart, altered, and extended...

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   United States   Lennar, the homebuilding giant, and Icon, wose specialty is large-scale 3D printing, have together announced that a project for a hundred single-familiy houses in Austin, Texas, designed in collaboration with BIG, the firm of the Danish architect Bja

Renco is an American company, based in South Florida, which spearheads advancements in the renewable composites products industry, from which it takes its name (RENewable COmposites). The huge Lego-like blocks they have patented are manufactured with

Enrique Morillo   Since the first modern yearnings to merge architecture and industry, many have tried to replace traditional building with serial production. If the success of these projects has up to now been relative, Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa seek to chan

AD   Katherine McLaughlin   Just 35 minutes from Manhattan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Socrates Zaferiou House sits on 2.5 private acres within Clausland Mountain Park in Blauvelt, New York. “It’s a complete escape from our New York City life, so it’s meant to be a decompression,” Sa

Icon 3d prints the first simulated Mars surface habitat for NASA, designed by Big-Bjarke Ingels Group. Mars Dune Alpha, the 3D-printed habitat located at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, will aid in long-duration science missions. ICON, deve

Francisco Mangado   At a time when the term ‘industrialization,’ applied to architecture, is used over and over without regard for the times it is our lot to live, we have to try to take this specification into account. We can look at industrialization from different an

One of the main obsessions of modernity was the idea of aligning architecture with the factory. Standardization, serialization, modularization, prefabrication, and the recourse to pieces prepared in the workshop were some of the strategies applied in

For the headquarters of the sports equipment and accessories manufacturer Amaya Sport in Noain (Navarre), the architect Josean Ruiz Esquiroz – who works from offices in Madrid and Gorraiz – reused ten shipping containers as structural pieces while st

grimshaw.global   Grimshaw announces the D-Tec suite of prefabricated health facilities created in partnership with SG Blocks and Osang Healthcare for on-site immediate Covid-19 testing...

One of the visual premonitions of the coronavirus crisis now hitting us with such rage was the construction in Wuhan of two huge hospitals in little more than fifteen days. With its good points – astonishing speed, logistical mobilization – as well a

After a protracted process, a period of eight years, that has not been spared its dose of controversy (in 2015 it was announced that the building’s real cost would exceed the initially budgeted amount of 50 million euros by a good 70%), Scotland’s ow

David Mencías   Modular architecture is still one of the most fascinating themes for architects from the perspective of rational thought. It evokes the childhood construction games that are so fondly remembered. The kit of parts offered endless combinations, but ins

The prefab shelter has been one of the obsessions of modern architecture, but the fruits of this obsession have been meager in terms of social and economic impact. As a matter of fact, prefabricated dwellings – except in their most profitable and ban

Oliver Wainwright   Packaged in boxes of 2.5 x 2 meters, the shelter designed by Ikea for refugee camps weights 169 kilograms and can be assembled in just four hours. 

Ramón Araujo   The fundamental innovation in the initial spurt of modern architecture were the building systems that replaced the 19th-century ones, which were based on traditional materials and mural construction. Materials and techniques now involved a production

Fernando Valderrama   It is taken for granted that China’s competitive edge is partly due to its lack of concern for safety at work and for the environment. But building in Shanghai requires 25% prefabrication, replacing traditional methods, and is aiming for 50% in the m

During the late 1980s, the German architect Hans Kollhoff designed and carried out works of great material force, among them Piraeus – a vast flexing brick apartment block located in one of the dockland sites of Amsterdam – and the ascetic mass housi

Industrialized construction has many advantages: it enhances building quality, improves work conditions, reduces building time and, in theory, also costs. All this without giving up typological freedom and achieving a good energy efficiency. These as

Designed by the Murcia-based architecture studio Adhoc msl, the Prefab Home draws inspiration from the typical cottages found on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, which are quite successful at addressing the basic dwelling requirements. This system ai

Designed by Miguel de Guzmán and the studio Veidimanna Protum, the single-family house is located in El Espinar, a small town in the mountains north of Madrid. The plot has a privileged location, on the boundary of the town next to the Natural Park o

The prefabricated, light and transportable module has deserved a lot of attention and research in modern architecture, but today its presence is rather modest, not to say scarce. The account of this elementary type could perhaps begin with Charlotte

Ramón Araujo   Recent times have been closely bound to cement production and cheap energy sources, but only industrialization will enable us to meet the environmental challenges of today.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Architecture needs industry, but industry does not ask for architects too often. More than a century after the Werkbund’s foundation, the necessary cross fertilization between art and industry is, in many geographical areas, a purpose rather than a p

Paul Andersen Jayne Kelley Paul Preissner   The Same Something for Everyone

Luis Machuca   Espacios para vivir, prefabricados

Christian Sumi Marianne Burkhalter   Zurich  2018  
Park Books   - 152 Pages