This article by Chris Knapp, the Director of Built-Environment Practice, originally appeared on Australian Design Review as "The End Of Prefabrication". Knapp calls for the end of prefabrication as a driver for design, pointing out its century-long failure to live up to its promise, as well as newer technology's ability to "mass produce difference".
Prefabrication – there is not another word in the current lexicon of architecture that more erroneously asserts positive change. For more than a century now, this industrial strategy of production applied to building has yielded both an unending source of optimism for architecture, and equally, a countless series of disappointments. This is a call for the end of prefabrication.
Read on after the break
The architecture world has been abuzz over news that aChinese construction company plans to build the world's tallest building— and to do it in just 90 daysusing a proprietary prefabrication technique.
Construction on the 838-meter highrise in Changsha, called Sky City One, is expected to begin this month.
After the project was announced, we reached out to Christian Sottile, the Dean of the School of Building Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design,who gave us his takeon why the project is a terrible step for architecture and urban living.
But not everyone is skeptical about Sky City One.Stan Klemanowicz,an architect and planner in Los Angeles with Project Development Associates, reached out to tell us why the project is actually revolutionary. He has allowed us to publish his response to Mr. Sottile's critique.
Read Sottile's and Klemanowicz's conflicting opinions, after the break...
