It seems like just yesterday, the idea of “prefabrication” (or “prefab”) was having its day in the sun as the next big concept to revolutionize architecture and design. MoMA parked a few prefabricated houses out in its courtyard, SHoP revealed its cluster of prefabricated towers for Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, and even taller buildings made of prefabricated parts were being conceived in — you guessed it — China. More recently, prefab has taken a back seat to more novel concepts (need we mention 3D printing again?), but its diminished presence on the Internet does not necessarily signal its demise. In fact, in the design-crazed Netherlands, the prefabricated home is making news again: A line of flatpack kit houses were recently made available in the Dutch town of Nijmegen with a price tag as small as $150,000 and an assembly time as short as six to eight weeks. More after the break.

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We’ve seen grandiose new skyscrapers do all sorts of weird things. From rotating dynamic towers, to hi-rises that have enormous voids, to skyscrapers built so tall they can’t find enough occupants to rent space, architects like to try anything to come up with a headline-grabbing design. However, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture‘s latest proposal for Mumbai’s tallest building—the slender 116-story, 400-meter residential Imperial Tower—may take the cake. According to AS+GG, the svelte structure is designed to “confuse the wind.” Click through to read more!

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Zaha Hadid isn’t new to celebrity or celebrities. News of her design for Naomi Campbell’s vacation home just outside Moscow quickly went viral only hours after it hit the web. Glamour Magazine came calling in November when the publication named the architect their “Woman of the Year“. And lest we forget, Zaha already reigns queen over architects, for now and, probably, forever. Now, there comes “confirmation” of a collaboration between Zaha and rapper, author, and designer(?) Pharrell Williams. Speaking to Hypebeast in an interview published yesterday, Pharrell, who was last spotted opining on the state of aesthetics at last month’s Design Miami, mentioned that he was in talks with Zaha about a joint project between them. “We’re touring around with the idea of a prefab for a house,” he said, alluding to an idea that was briefly touched upon his book, Pharrell: The Places and Spaces I’ve Been.

When pressed about the nature of the talks, and if they were any time schedule attached to the project, Pharrell simply answered that “we’re going to see something through.” The architectural collaboration wouldn’t be the first for Pharrell, who has previously worked with Chad Oppenheim on two separate occasions. Nor does his partnership with Hadid come as a surprise, given that the idea was discussed in Places and Spaces I’ve Been. Still, this new interview seems to suggest that the two are in the beginning stages of a collaboration that might, in Pharrell’s words, produce a “really fun” and “next-level” project that “could change the game.”

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Architizer is hosting the world’s definitive architectural awards program, with 50+ categories and 200+ jurors. As part of an ongoing series, we’re spotlighting projects that fit into “Plus” categories, including “Fabrication,” that tap into topical and culturally relevant themes. To see a full list of categories and learn more about the awards, visit architizerawards.com.

Don’t let the flashy renderings fool you. The future of architecture lay not so much in novel forms as in new methods of digital fabrication. In an age of rapidly diminishing resources, architects must develop, together with research laboratories, tech leaders, and software designers, efficient construction models that make more with less. This will require new types of mechanical and robotic armatures, which prove more nimble, accurate, and thus, efficient at building both complex and simple structures, to put those new model into practice. The goal is to put all of these ingenious ideas to the test, and develop the best for widespread application at every scale.

Fabrication innovations have thoroughly and irrevocable changed the making of architecture, and architects should welcome that change. That just doesn’t mean corporate designers like Foster + Associates that have now have robotic and digital fabrication wings, but also smaller firms that are responsible for the majority of building. These techniques and machines should be made available and affordable to every kind of architect, and not exclusively licensed to the larger firms. Here’s to hoping for an office robot arm!

Click on through for self-building architecture, giant 3D printers, blood bricks, and of course, robots, robots, robots.

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Well, here’s a good-design twofer. Michael Maltzan Architecture is combining two of our favorite trends—thoughtful prefab construction and the increasing appetite for well-designed supportive housing in cities—in a project for downtown Los Angeles’s Skid Row. The neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of homeless people in the nation; Maltzan’s Star Apartments, developed with the Skid Row Housing Trust, will offer 102 new studio apartments for the area’s chronically homeless individuals when it opens this summer. Going prefab makes the building process faster and cheaper—and, in this case, snazzier! Over the course of this month, the units will be hoisted up on a crane and stacked into place in Maltzan’s microcosm of an urban skyline. Read more.

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Hans van Heeswijk Architects’ concept for the Meandering Tower House.

It’s not often that a European architect approaches American-style tract housing with anything resembling desire. But on a tour of the modernist developer Joseph Eichler’s homes in and around San Francisco, the Dutch architect Hans van Heeswijk was taken with the region’s hilly expanses of single-family homes. Imposing that style of development onto the already saturated Dutch Randstad—the urban super-region comprising Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht—is obviously out of the question, but California’s spaciousness got Heeswijk thinking about how to build a Dutch residence with the same sense of air and possibility. Read more!

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The original concept of prefab homes included traits such as accessibility and globalization. But it’s safe to say that such ideas have become lost in translation, leaving the prefab business strictly location-based and with a limited client range of only a couple hundred miles.  Well, Jared Levy and Gordon Scott are bringing some of that old idealism back into these modular dwellings. The architects have launched Connect:Homes, an LA-based company that aims to create affordable, green, and accessible prefab homes for clients all over the world. Read more!

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Yesterday at OFF PICNIC, a precursor to Amsterdam’s annual PICNIC technology festival, dutch design firm DUS unveiled its incredible KamerMaker (RoomBuilder), the world’s first mobile 3d printer that actually produces usable pavilions. The printer was tucked away inside a giant chrome box for people to enter and explore. The KamerMaker creates pavilions inside a pavilion, with the ability to churn out “rooms” up to 11 feet high and 7 feet wide. While the KamerMaker may be reminiscent of other experimental 3D printers, especially Enrico Dini’s D-Shape printer, the Dutch version is completely mobile, and, thus, could potentially change the way we think of prefab architecture forever! Read More.

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Like their western cousins IKEA, much-loved Japanese home furnishings store MUJI is expanding into prefab home design.

Back in 2009, the store commissioned the venerable Kengo Kuma to design two prefabricated homes, which could be customized, purchased, and assembled on site. Kuma’s elegant (and earthquake-proof) designs were made from an affordable industrialized kit-of-parts, meaning they had the potential to be marketed towards a larger audience.

It seems that MUJI has plans to do just that. Spoon & Tamago reports that the brand is holding a contest that offers one lucky winner the chance to live in Kuma’s Tree House (fully furnished with MUJI products) for two years – rent free. Read on.

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Following last week’s announcement by Chinese developers for plans to build the world’s tallest structure in three months time is this modest (yet no less significant) record-breaking design. Last month, the latest iteration of the Micro-Compact Home was installed on a hillside plot overlooking Lake Maggiore in Switzerland, with construction times clocking in at just under 5 minutes. The 2.6 meter (8.5 feet) wide prefabricated house, dubbed m-ch 016, was flown in by helicopter and delivered to the elevated site, which had been prepared beforehand with foundation pads, plumbing, and electric wires, and even landscaping and terrace already in place. Once the 1.8 ton structure was lowered into position, a small construction team speedily

The sixteenth in the series of micro-structures developed by London-based designer Richard Horden of Horden Cherry Lee Architects, the house is unique in that it sports a light-weight aluminum frame rather that the wood version employed by its predecessors. The new model is also slight larger, extending an extra meter in all directions to accommodate dwelling space for 2 people. That may not sound like much of an expansion, but that one meter makes all the difference in what some would call claustrophobic space. There’s room for an adjustable double bed, a living/dining space capable of seating eight guests, a bathroom with shower, and a respectable kitchen, complete with cupboard, sink, fridge, and microwave. The house even has air conditioning, LED lighting, beige leather wall treatments a custom sound system, and, most importantly, that inimitable panorama.

The m-ch 016 by Richard Horden

[via dezeen]

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