Let's not get too excited about modular construction.

Hi #AnneChen - Always great to hear from you! You asked about my latest thoughts on this modular construction article: https://lnkd.in/d4iketti. The comments field wasn't quite big enough so I wrote an "article" instead :)

Basically my thoughts on this have been pretty stable since the underwhelming MoMA prefab housing exhibition in 2008. In short: "It's nothing to get excited about"

Why not get excited? Several reasons: First, I don't see modular off-site construction as something new, and certainly not revolutionary. Most building components and assemblies have been manufactured off site, in factories no less, for over a hundred years. The degrees of assembly on and off site has been shifting (back and forth) to balance different technologies, performance criteria, and cost models, but that's about it. Almost a century ago the Empire State Building was built start to finish in one year, likely faster than these new modular buildings will go together in New York City. This was due to great off-site manufacturing, great on-site coordination and an exceptional labor force. So the promise of faster delivery is neutral at best. (nothing new).

Meanwhile, the bigger problem I see with intensified off site manufacturing is that, if truly successful, it will liquidate the local skills and innovation ecosystem for building-making and design innovation, which will in turn ripple through other sectors. It is now well-known that robust innovation happens (only) in the context of multidimensional and multidisciplinary environments. You may remember an article I wrote on this 12 years ago called "The Innovation Paradox"

As we strip away the participatory nature of the built environment, we reduce the number and types of jobs, skills, companies, cultures, individuals etc. that currently participate, compete and collaborate to make a building happen. Isn't this messy? Hell ya! Is it inefficient? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Beyond the (indeterminate) efficiency question, though, it is also a system that has many benefits to our society, not the least being a diverse category of well-paying jobs for young men who are increasingly in a demographic danger zone as our physical environments become more automated. This is a difficult topic but we need to be able to look squarely at societal impacts of any innovation before we let techno-optimism get the better of us.

Underpinning modular construction are "automation and offshoring" two favorite words of Walmart and Wall Street. These strategies are fawned over for their cost reduction promises, while any downsides are typically externalized, i.e. punted down the generational timeline. A quick look at virtually all other "product" manufacturing categories should make it very clear that within a very short period of time, ALL of our modular buildings will be made in China (or pick another low wage, low standards region). Why and how could it be any other way? Do we care about this? Have we even thought about this? I am sure there will eventually be some real benefits like lower cost, as there are with Walmart, Dollarama, Apple products, etc. Nevertheless, I challenge everyone reading this to make a mental list of 10 reasons that you might not want every new building you inhabit to be designed and manufactured in Asia, then shipped in containers for quick assembly in NYC.

We also ought to look at the bottleneck of ideas and inputs that a modular construction industry necessarily creates. Despite the promises of "more choices" it should be self-evident that choices in the modular construction landscape will increasingly tend towards catalogue choices embedded in a software system. Again this may work for efficiency, but it deals out the fundamental shaping of what a building is and how it get's built by local and diverse actors. Where is the budding architect from the Bronx going to enter this world of building delivery apps and remote robotic factories in twenty years? This will be a world of building with a mind of its own, with plenty of superficial choices but a system of production that has displaced all alternatives.

Improving the quality, sustainability and accessibility of the built environment (presuming this is our goal) can happen in many many ways, and it unequivocally does not require modular construction to get there. There are many strategies that have people at their core rather than robots. Perhaps modular may be part of the long term solution. Perhaps not. For that and other reasons we should proceed with caution and not put too many eggs in the modular basket. And we should not all throw away our hammers and safety glasses.

It is my belief that any society without the tools and skills to build things is a society destined for collapse. Maintaining a diverse, participatory building industry is one way to ensure we never become one.