About the session
In search of productivity gain, the construction industry is pursuing an “Industrialisation” strategy; moving from a “wet trade” to a “dry trade”, where “pre-fabrication” would become the norm, rather than the exception.
This has been attempted before, with multiple examples delivering known failures - at least in terms of building a desirable built environment where communities thrive. Why does a “design for construction” approach constrain the design to a point where the product fails?
Does digitisation offer an opportunity to Industrialise construction, yet deliver a desirable built environment? Could we achieve what the car industry managed to deliver: a mass customised product that society desires? What are the barriers?
We answer yes and believe this challenge can be tackled by using computational design techniques. We believe that solving the problem requires to re-define how we think of the project space for design and construction, to eradicate information loss between the two, and achieve a “Design for Construction” that merges design logic, construction logic, at full resolution.
BuroHappold has now delivered multiple projects in this “merged project space”. The case study presented is “City of Dreams” in Macau, where due to the building form, design and construction logic was merged; demonstrating the feasibility and proving the validity of the approach.
Al Fisher will then share how we are applying this thinking to a simpler UK project, with a more constrained construction logic, to deliver a fully flexible, yet industrialised construction method - in the computational space
