For everyone, their home is their
palace, and they are the kings and queens of their own little palaces. But if
we start making palaces for everyone, we will only be building castles in the
air. The urgent need of the hour is to build more houses, with fewer resources,
in the quickest time, for the many seeking a pucca house.
We will need to create a paradigm
shift in the way we design, engineer and construct social housing in India. If
we continue to construct our houses and apartment buildings like we have being doing
since the past three decades, it will be impossible to reach our intended
target anytime in the foreseeable future.
There can be much learned product
design and manufacture, including car manufacture. Some of the key aspects that
can be directly transferred to house construction are:
- Modularity: Modularity is a design approach that sub-divides a system into smaller components that can be replicated, scaled, and used in groups or independently. Modularity helps in reducing costs and has been extensively in car manufacture, computer manufacture, etc. Even in the furniture industry, the concept of modularity has been widely accepted as modular office furniture and modular kitchens.
- Standardization: Modularity can be truly successful only through standardization. Standardization implements uniform technical standards and norms across the industry. This assures, uniformity, quality and ease of repetition.
- Mass production: Mass production is the process of manufacturing large quantities of standardized products. This frequently utilizes assembly line technology. Mass production is the process of creating large numbers of similar products efficiently. With pre-cast/ pre-fab technology mass production in the construction industry has become a reality.
The concept of “Design for
Manufacture Assembly (DFMA)” is gaining popularity in the design and construction
industry internationally. The idea combines the two design approaches – “Design
for Manufacture” and “Design for Assembly”. The idea is to treat the building
as a “kit-of-parts” to be manufactured and assembled on site. It requires a
paradigm shift in the way architects and engineers design buildings.
Though pre-cast technology exists,
its applicability is immensely limited. Only when mass production is combined
with modularity and standardization can pre-cast/ pre-fab have an industry-wide
applicability and use, and be truly effective. Mass production has been highly
successful in the car manufacturing industry and computer industry because of
modularity and standardization.
Another argument against mass production
of houses is the lack of uniqueness in buildings and monotony of urban
landscape. But, don’t we all own cars that are mass produced and standardized
to a great extent? Do we ever complain? Of course, different car manufacturers
and different models look different from each other, but we have thousands of
each brand and each model on the roads. There is modularity, standardization and
mass production behind it.
I will talk about this a bit more in
my next blog.
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