ARC3706H S
Instructor: Jason Halter
Meeting Section: L0101
Wednesday, 3:00PM - 6:00PM

This seminar will explore prefabrication in the context of contemporary architectural production, (its successes and failures), and will address how current building technologies utilize modular design principles, factory-built components, ‘kit of parts’ assemblies and mass production techniques to produce innovative building adaptations for myriad industrial applications.

Focusing on developing resilient strategies in the context of extreme climate conditions and diminishing natural resources globally, the entire premise of material procurement and resource management, from extraction to harvesting of natural resources requires a global rethink, as we attempt to do more with less and achieve greater impact through evolving building science, towards maximum structural and performative efficiency.

Historical and contemporary initiatives that present both material advancement and novel applications are analyzed and speculatively hybridized to imagine penultimate systems within mass production optimization. As architects and designers, through synthesis and adaptive distillation, referencing multiple applications of existing off-site construction methods, we will together consider modular solutions for maximizing ‘design to production’ models, to address for example, the immediate need for rapid deployment housing in urban and remote contexts in Canada and globally.

Projects will include research, written, diagrammed, and drawn, presented assemblages with the goal of creating speculative design pro forma documents. One of many potential goals or outcomes of a speculative trajectory would be the introduction of a new part, or parts of a system, of adaptive, hybrid, modular invention. Working towards a novel vernacular, our collective output will generate ideas for sustainable, climate resilient design solutions using economical, mass-produced modular methodologies.