Ever since the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of mass production, the ownership and use of simple products and services like flush toilets with running water, electricity, heating, and cooling are seen as human rights in many areas of the world. With the majority of homes and residential projects being individually designed and built to order – therefore without the speed and cost advantages of mass production – an underperforming housing construction sector means many people – even in the world’s richest countries – are being denied one of the most basic human rights, having somewhere to call home.
The UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) states that there were over 100 million forcibly displaced people worldwide in 2023 – a figure that has tripled over the last 10 years. For host countries, finding safe, sustainable housing solutions for those in need, both in the short- and the long-term, is an ongoing and dramatically worsening challenge.
It’s not just the emergency provision of homes for those caught up in global conflicts and disasters either. There are an estimated 150 million homeless people worldwide – 2% of the population. And even for those fortunate enough to sleep under the same roof every night, record numbers are being pushed into poverty due to the rising cost of homes and rents. The number of renting households in the US, for example, who pay over half their income as rent is expected to rise to 13.1 million by 2025.
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Why Choose Modular Construction?
Modular Construction: A Housing Crisis Solution
Modular construction takes the speed, cost, and quality control benefits of a mass production model and applies them on a large scale to the construction sector. Unable to build entire structures in their entirety in a factory setting, buildings are produced in ‘modules’ under controlled conditions before being joined together and finished on site.
Using the same materials and designing to the same codes and standards as conventional building techniques, the factory-controlled process is greener with less material waste and simpler reuse, faster with a reduced construction schedule and fewer delays, safer with reduced risk, and more cost-effective. The speed, cost, and sustainability benefits of the process make modular construction, if scaled up appropriately, a realistic solution to the housing crises in many countries.
Modular Construction for Refugee and Emergency Housing Needs
The popular image of a refugee camp is one of fields of tents lined up in rows like a music festival, serving as temporary residences for, on average, over 10,000 displaced people in need of emergency assistance. With some refugees spending years or even decades living in the camps, however, there’s often nothing temporary about the situation.
The lower cost and greater speed of modular construction make it an ideal solution for the restrictive demands of rapid-response architectural aid, where entire cities offering medical and political assistance and social and cultural engagement must be designed and erected in a matter of days. The practice can also be used as the second – but equally as important – stage of architectural response: transitional housing.
The Home not Shelter! Initiative, for example, by a team of architecture students at the CODE department of the TU Berlin, used modular construction to provide refugees with a route to active employment. Meanwhile, The Aalto University Wood Program’s Liina Transitional Shelter was designed to be assembled by two adults in six hours, and comfortably house a family of five for up to five years before being recycled or relocated and reused elsewhere.
Modular Construction Used for Homeless Housing and Rehabilitation
With high refugee numbers, even when asylum is granted there’s often a lack of housing to move on to, leaving thousands stranded in the cracks of a system willing to forget about them. With these and many other causes for homelessness such as escaping abuse or leaving institutional care without proper support, there’s a long-term need for more transitional housing projects.
The Hope On developments in Los Angeles, for example, by KTGY Architecture + Planning, use the speed and customization that are made possible by modular construction to manufacture housing modules off-site before stacking them into a single building and provide residents with much-needed privacy, safety, and a sense of community. Meanwhile, another of the architects’ modular construction projects, ‘Re-Habit’ is designed around a modular bed pod system that helps residents increase their independence gradually the longer they stay, with training, recreational space, an extensive roof garden, and other support and services available on-site.
Modular Construction Used to Cut Working Poverty
While the advantages of modular construction can make a big difference to thousands at the more dramatic end of the housing spectrum with emergency aid, perhaps this is all thinking a little too small scale. With rising rental costs pushing more and more working households into poverty – forced to move further away from jobs and lifelong communities and still being left without enough income for basic necessities including food, childcare, and healthcare – modular construction can bring about the speed of change required by the market, and make a difference to people in the millions.
The Phoenix project in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, combined the power of modular construction with artificial intelligence to half the cost and the carbon footprint of a typical multi-family building. By simplifying the complexities of design, the initial design package creation time was reduced from two weeks to six hours, and by prefabricating housing modules in a factory and assembling them on-site, the construction process was reduced to two weeks.
By reducing the time, financial, and environmental cost of large-scale projects with modular construction, these affordable housing projects receive billions of dollars in government subsidies and can be built specifically for low-income families and victims of abuse.
This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Modular Housing, proudly presented by BUILDNER.
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