129
Liu Dongwei/
China Institute
of Building
Standard Design &
Research,
Prefab public
rental housing
based on a
skeleton-infill
system,
Daxing,
Beijing,
2014
Exploring the
architectural systems
and key technologies
employed
in
the
industrialisation of
affordable housing,
the researcher here
completely separated
the prefabricated
structural system and
the highly industrialised
infill
component system
to achieve greater
interior flexibility.
129
The concept of autonomous assembly has perhaps brought us closer than ever to realising the ideal vision
of generic construction, where the production of buildings is fully programmed and regulated, and the
on-site part of the process minimised. The past century has witnessed continuous endeavours to adopt
a
modern mode of production in architectural design. ‘Machine’ or ‘furniture’ became metaphors for
a
new architecture that presumed to be able to be mass produced and easily assembled. ‘Prefabricatable’,
‘reproducible’, ‘demountable’ and ‘movable’ became its catchwords and lasting criteria. More recently,
advanced manufacturing and digital fabrication have allowed us to make almost anything in highly
regulated industrial spaces. The construction of buildings, however, still mostly takes ...
