A residential building composed of premanufactured components, designed by Philleo Engineering and Architectural Service Photo from Building Tomorrow: The Mobile/Manufactured Housing Industry by Arthur D. Bernhardt

Manufactured modular structures offer an alternative. Adaptability exists from their inception, with flexible design options that are easily modified, and the choice of relocatability. The integration of standardized construction options, based on how organizations tend to use space, and pre-engineered, factory fabricated components, reduce costs to a reasonable level, allowing resources to be committed to the task at hand, rather than the structure in which to do it.

A fully assembled modular building being trucked to its site. Photo Williams Scotsman Inc.

By definition, commercial modular buildings are 60 to 100 percent factory built, and are assembled in one location and moved to another. In fact, most new construction contains many pre-manufactured components, such as kitchen cabinetry, roof trusses, and door/frame assemblies. Totally modular construction simply maximizes the efficiency of the factory assembly line process.

The needs of organizations change over time, as do urban contexts. Modular buildings offer flexibility by being designed with the option of disassembling the structure and moving it to another location. This relocatability means that the investment in the buildings, and the effort to make the improvements to them, is not lost if a move is necessary. And the impact that modular buildings have on their site is minimal. When a lot is vacated, there are no foundation remnants or cellar holes scarring the ground.

In Los Angeles, it is said that you have a 50% percent chance of being educated in one, and if you go to jail, you have a good chance of being incarcerated in one. In an earthquake prone land, this is reassuring as modular buildings are actually structurally stronger than most site-built buildings, as they are constructed to withstand the turbulence of traveling by road from the factory to site. In other ways too, modular construction can improve the quality of the building, as they are manufactured by technicians who are experts at their craft, not unknown journeymen, taken from the local pool of available workers.

Moshe Safdie's Habitat, a modernist modular mountain, built in Montreal, 1967. Photo from The American Aesthetic, by Nathaniel Owings, 1969

For decades, modern utopias have been designed around modular forms of construction. The visionary designers that have had perhaps the greatest impact on architecture, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Buckminster Fuller, all had designs for low-cost, modular building complexes. The execution of these plans was often foiled by the realities of the marketplace. In the case of those constructed as high rise apartment blocks, the structures became blighted by the social effects of economic disparity, or ended up costing as much or more than regular construction, and were available only to the rich, such as Moshe Safdie's remarkable Habitat building in Montreal, created during the modernist frenzy of Expo ¨67.

Four premanufactured units, two up and two down, makes a 2000 square foot building, at around half the cost of new construction. At left, an employee lounge/office under a warehouse roof in Hawaii (photo from the Modular Building Institute). At right, an external frame support system for a temporary engineering office at a construction site in Boston.
CLUI photo

But perhaps modular construction works best when applied to the ubiquitous one or two-level buildings that make up the majority of the world's architecture. These are the buildings which small business move in and out of, and that families occupy.

This stacking of manufactured housing units into the nations first (and probably only) multi-level èmobile home parkî was performed by these three gentlemen, in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, and was called SkyeRise. Photo from Wheel Estate, by Allan D. Wallis

There is certainly room for improvement in the construction of pre-manufactured housing units, especially in the variety of options for stylistic elements. However their very existence today is tremendously beneficial, as in these times of hyperinflated housing costs, it enables more people to live in their own spaces, with the freedom of relocatability to boot.

An office building in Sunnyvale, California, constructed out of 72 12'X52' modular units, at a cost of $55.00 per square foot. Photo from Meehleis Modular Buildings, Inc.

But with the less idiosyncratic requirements of non-residential structures, modularity finds its best medium. From the small, single-wide applications of a security station to four-story hospital structures, modular buildings are making their way down our streets to vacant lots, and their potential is only beginning to be appreciated.

Modular construction refers to a building method, and not a finished product, and a modular building can take many forms. In the words of a member of the Modular Building Institute, an industry trade organization: "If we would like the rest of the world to believe we do more than trailers, then we must eliminate this inadequately descriptive term from our industry vocabulary."

Two single-wide modular trailers, where mobility was an important consideration. At left, a timing, scoring, and press box. At right, a temporary flight support office at a small airport. Photos from the Modular Building Institute

Premanufactured specialty industrial applications: At left, a telephone infrastructure equipment building (CLUI photo), at right a control station at a cement plant. Photos from the Modular Building Institute

Manufactured buildings can be added on to existing structures, as with this caboose to create a restaurant (left), or have stylistic attributes added to the exterior to integrate the modular components, as at this elementary school (right). Photos from the Modular Building Institute

Once a modular structure is installed on site, it can become as permanent as any other building, with the simple passing of time. CLUI photo