The global need for affordable housing is massive and growing rapidly. India alone estimates that they currently have a housing shortage of over 18 million dwelling units, and that number continues to grow. China and many African nations are in a similar condition with population growth fast out pacing housing production. Skilled construction labor is in short supply.

Working with an international consortium, James B. Guthrie, AIA, president of Miletus Group, Inc., has developed designs and a design-build strategy to bring the benefits of prefabrication and modern methods of construction to worldwide areas of need.

James will share the story of the design, its design-build process, and how this international team came together to offer a new scheme for building worldwide affordable housing.

Brown Bag Roundtable: Modular Architecture
Tuesday, March 25, 2014 — 12:00 – 1:30PM

AIA San Diego Chapter Office
233 A Street, Suite 200
San Diego, CA 92101
http://www.aiasandiego.org

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) recently (September 27-29, 2012) concluded their fall conference Offsite: Theory and Practice of Architectural Production in Philadelphia. Miletus Group was proud to sponsor the keynote address: Offsite in the UK. It was given by Jaimie Johnston, Director at Bryden-Wood, London. Miletus President James B. Guthrie, AIA also moderated a couple of panels and attended a number of the papers given. Schools from all over the US and several other countries were represented as both presenters and attendees.

Bryden-Wood
BAA Airport Corridor Product

The depth of the research and conversation was impressive. This may be the first time so much brain power has been singularly focused on the discussion of the past, present and future of offsite and prefabricated construction methods in architecture. It gives one hope that the architectural community is embracing this method of construction with a greater depth of interest and knowledge than it ever has before. In the past we have seen some dabbling by some famous and not so famous architects, but at the ACSA conference there was a very real depth and breadth to the conversation of offsite as an architectural solution. It remains to be seen if this event will be The inflection point of offsite moving from an architectural novelty to an integrated part of the building of architecture, but it may very well be.

 As Guthrie pointed out in his keynote introduction: “If we look at the long history of iron and steel in architecture, we see its roots as a non-architectural structural building material at the beginning of the 19th Century. At that time it was embraced by structural and cost engineers. 80 years later, a French bridge engineer caught the world’s imagination by building the functionless yet dramatic Eiffel Tower.  About that same time Jennings and Sullivan were in Chicago developing the first architectural expressions based on iron. It took another 40 years until Mies turned it into poetry. In the historic arc of offsite construction, we are at the time of Sullivan. The coming years should prove very exciting as architects learn to use and exploit offsite.”

The papers from the ACSA fall conference on Offsite will be published soon.
For more on ACSA: http://www.acsa-arch.org

Question:
Are there any new materials or technologies which are making prefab construction more cost effective?

Answer:
As far as I am aware, no none that directly pertain to offsite construction.

There are some new building materials on the horizon that show promise, but as of yet they have not made it into prefab production. At this time, the cost benefit of prefab is in the process, not the materials. This could easily change in the near future as the supply chain becomes more robust, but for now the focus has been on tweaking standard methods to make building more cost effective.

Manufacturing processes that allow repetitive work to be done quickly is the chief driver of prefab right now. Quick assembly once on the site is another. Use of sustainable building practices is yet another. Perhaps one aspect of using manufactured processes that is a new benefit to the building world is the idea of greater precision in building. Products produced in a factory setting are inherently built more accurately than on site work. This can translate into stronger and more efficient buildings. The application of the methodology to architecture is somewhat new. The building materials and technologies, however, still tend to parallel standard construction.

Related link: http://www.newschoolarch.edu

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2012

Question:
What percentage of time and money do you think prefab can save a project?

Answer:
When it comes to prefab, generalized questions can be difficult to answer. In general, on a direct apples-to-apples comparison, I would say that you could expect that a prefab project can be 0-15% less per square foot than a traditionally built project of the same design and specifications. There are too many variables, though, to allow a hard and fast rule as to discounts.

It is also important to keep in mind that when we are talking about prefab, we can be talking about prefab architecture or prefab building. When I talk about prefab architecture, I am using the idea that architecture is a high quality building designed by a professional and it is always site specific. This means that each prefab architecture project will be unique to the site it is being placed on. The quality of the end result will be high quality, and the owner will be a ‘client’ of a professional architect. Prefab building, in contrast, is a generic ‘product’ that can be non-site specific. The quality can vary dramatically from project to project and the owner of this product is a customer of a building company.

The other important thing to consider is the definition of “project”. Architects tend to think of a project as the specific building they are working on. Building owners, however, think of a “project” as the entire business model related to that building. This includes the architecture plus: land acquisition and development, operations and maintenance, financing, cash flow and other business considerations. To answer the question about prefab architecture from the architect’s side, at this time a prefab architecture project has no inherent time or money advantages to the architect except as it may add value for their clients. To answer the question from the owner’s perspective regarding prefab architecture, it can have significant time savings, which to the owner can translate into a huge financial savings to the non-architectural aspects of the project. The amount of savings is, of course, dependent on the project.

Typical Modular Home, USA
2 Offsite Stories, 1 Single Family House, 4 Modules

On the small scale, in the US right now it is very easy for a homebuyer to buy a house much like they buy a car. The homebuyer can go to a sales lot of a manufactured home builder, tour model homes, pick out their model, pick out colors and finishes, and have their new home delivered in a very short amount of time. These homebuyers are buying a prefab building, not prefab architecture. The opportunity for this kind of building to become architecture is very limited. Because prefabrication is a method of construction that takes advantage of manufacturing processes, the economic side of prefab is most successful when there is volume on the production side. One single family home does not afford current manufacturing processes the kind of efficiencies needed to be cost effective. In the case of a home or small commercial building, volume is achieved when many of the same design are produced. In this situation, the efficiency is dispersed among many buyers. This means, naturally, that each individual buyer looses the opportunity to influence the design and quality of their purchase.

Modular Housing, England
10 Offsite Stories, 162 Apartments, 630 Modules

On the large scale, the prefab building buyer is also buying the convenience of speed to occupancy, but the larger scale can allow the project to be more architectural. Fundamentally the building process is relatively the same between prefab and onsite construction, except that the offsite components can be built simultaneously with much of the onsite work. The onsite assembly of the offsite components can then occur very rapidly. On a large project this can save a lot of time, and thus a lot of money to the owner. This is important, as even if the square footage costs of onsite and offsite construction are nearly identical, the cost savings to the owner can be very significant and far exceed the 0-15% savings in square footage costs. Unlike a single family home, the size of a large project can allow the design to take on far more significant role than is possible in small projects. It is the large projects that create the greatest opportunity for all the benefits of prefabrication and the application of real architecture to meld. This is the future of prefabrication in architecture.

Related link: http://www.newschoolarch.edu

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2011

Designed by the modular architecture specialists at Miletus Group, Inc., the HPMO installation is a pinnacle part of Jobsite Mobile Office’s 40^th anniversary celebration taking place at the show.

About the Green Fleet HPMO Design

“We are proud of the work we did in partnership with Jobsite,” states James B. Guthrie, AIA, Miletus Group president. “The revolutionary HPMO uses at least one third less energy than conventional mobile offices. Some customers are reporting energy savings of well over 50%. This new thinking in mobile office design also includes a high level of recycled materials and is 100% recyclable at the end of its long life cycle. Our team spent a great deal of time analyzing the best sustainability practices in the building industry and then found ways to apply them to the mobile and modular office-building sector. Little will appear changed to office occupants in terms of the general layout, construction, and convenience of the high performance units. However, noticeable differences will appear in the form of substantially lower utility bills and significantly higher levels of comfort during hot summer and frigid winter months,” says Guthrie.

The Jobsite Green Team celebrates their 40th Anniversary at the BCA Construction and Design Expo. The Miletus Group designed the innovative HPMO to be featured at the Expo.

Find out more about the latest methods in modern, modular construction. It’s not just theory; it’s winning prestigious design awards for architects interested in sustainable building, cost efficiency and quality control.

Come to the next meeting of the Modular Architecture Brown Bag group to hear Eric Naslund, FAIA of Studio E Architects discuss his project: High Tech High. Eric will be sharing his experiences using modular construction in his COTE award-winning design.

Modular Brown-Bag Roundtable
August 2, 2011
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

AIA San Diego
233 A Street, #200
San Diego, CA  92101
Phone: (619) 232-0109
Email: info@aiasandiego.org

Increasing interest and the recent growth in the US and abroad of new construction substantial modular buildings, and the industries surrounding it, signifies a significant change on the architectural landscape. At the National AIA level, on the new AIAKnowledgeNet, The Modular and Prefabricated Architecture Group has been established to provide a central location where architects and allied professionals can share, learn and promote state-of-the-art offsite construction to new architectural levels.

AIA San Diego invites you to join your peers who share your interest in this topic at a local Brown-Bag Roundtable. No RSVP is necessary. This is a free, member-only, bring-your-own-brown-bag event. Food vendors are available in the building for those wishing to purchase their lunch.

High Tech High
Jim Brady Architectural Photography

High Tech High Modules

© Miletus Group, Inc. 2011

“The new design office gives us a great new platform to reach out to the entire Chicago metropolitan market,” says James B. Guthrie, AIA, president of Miletus Group, adding, “We have exciting plans for innovative, large-scale modular solutions involving hotel, apartment, and healthcare facility projects,” he further explains. “Chicago is a natural market for substantial building in these sectors, making it a perfect fit for our future growth strategy. In addition, Chicago is my hometown, so I very much look forward to working there with our staff of talented architects.”

Chicago was selected as a key growth market, according to Guthrie, because of its proximity to the company’s production facility in Indiana, and because it provides a large market area with a history of progressive thinking in terms of architecture and building. Guthrie points out that early in the twentieth century, Chicago-founded Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold over 70,000 precut and prepackaged homes through their mail order Modern Homes program, which allowed customers to choose a house to suit their individual tastes and budgets. At approximately the same time, he goes on to explain, Frank Lloyd Wright introduced his textile block Usonian home concept to demonstrate that exceptional quality and design, using prefabricated components, can be made available to the masses.

“Conceptually, we stand on the shoulders of such Chicago icons as Sears and Frank Lloyd Wright, who paved the way for modular architecture,” Guthrie states. “Today, we are seeing a resurgence in modular architecture,” he continues. “The interest is driven in small part by economics, but more so by a desire for greener construction practices, creative design, and the caliber of high quality production that Miletus Group consistently delivers and will now extend into the Chicago market.”

Frank Lloyd Wright McBean House in Rochester, Minnesota. This Usonian house is an example of the second type (Prefab #2) of the Marshall Erdman Prefab Houses.

Sears Homes 1908 – 1914, Chicago, IL From the Sears Archives Model No. 52

Miletus Group’s innovative Hurricane Katrina housing solution, named The Shotgun Project, was featured in the May/June issue of Residential Architect. According to Residential Architect, “Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flooding left New Orleans with a significant housing crisis that has not yet been resolved. Rochester, Ind.–based design/build firm Miletus Group, which specializes in prefab and modular systems, has developed a prototype that may help.”

“These ingenious modular structures are substantial homes,” Miletus president James B. Guthrie, AIA notes, “fully compliant with current building codes and FEMA standards, offering a sustainable, permanent solution to the current and near-term housing needs of New Orleans.”

Click on the image below to read the entire article online.