17. Richard Lavington, Partner at McCreanor Lavington architects, speaking at The Pre-Fabulous Home.

18. John Miles, a Main Board Director of Arup Group, a Director of The Housing Forum, and a commissioner for CABE, speaking at The Pre-Fabulous Home.

19. Homing in on Excellence - a commentary on the use of offsite fabrication methods for the UK housebuilding industry, The Housing Forum, London, 2002, page 17.

20. Homing in on Excellence, page 43.

21. Stephen Rogers, Chief Geotechnical Engineer for Roger Bullivant Ltd, speaking at The Pre-Fabulous Home.

22. Homing in on Excellence, page 52.

Richard Lavington is a Partner at McCreanor Lavington architects, a London and Rotterdam based practice.

Their work in the Netherlands and the UK includes urban regeneration projects and the design of mixed-use neighbourhoods.

Richard is a graduate of Bath University and has taught at Canterbury School of Architecture, Nottingham University, and currently teaches at Bath. He is also a Director of Design for Homes, and is a member of the panel of enablers for CABE.

Stephen Rogers is the Chief Geotechnical Engineer for Roger Bullivant Ltd. Over 30 years the Roger Bullivant Group has grown into one of the top three foundation engineering companies in the UK.

With an annual turnover in excess of £64m, the company can offer, arguably, the most extensive range of quality foundation products and solutions in the world.

Stephen is a Civil Engineer who graduated from Portsmouth Polytechnic. He developed his engineering expertise in a number of companies, including 5 years in the Department of Works in Papua New Guinea. He has also taught engineering at the Department of Civil Engineering at Leeds Metropolitan University.

He joined Roger Bullivant in 2001.

The Pre-Fabulous Home Continued from page 2

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It is obviously true that labour productivity can be realised through innovation in site-based building methods, and Homing in on Excellence recognises that. To make the point Richard Lavington of architects McCreanor Lavington, supported by the commercial design manager at Hanson Brick Els Bleus, gave a presentation of innovations in brickwork.

It is clear that developments such as glued brickwork of large face formats and narrow bed widths, timber or steel frame outer leaf construction, and fully insulated prefabricated brick panels, all have a vital role to play in advancing site based construction, subject to good detailing and on site quality control at other construction interfaces.

Their efforts were towards realising '… a greater visual impact from the brick itself, with no mortar, no water, and no efflorescence as a consequence.' Also wonderfully obsessive was their attempt to discipline movement joints. Lavington spoke for many architects when he said it was '… not that we didn't want them to exist, but that we didn't want them to appear.' (17) This was brickwork, but not as a craftsman would know it, for a site based industry with too few craftsmen.

Also both speakers, were only too aware about the difficulty of promoting brickwork at a seminar about OSF - the road or rail deliverable Pre-Fabulous Home needs to be lightweight. The innovation that Hanson Brick have developed to lighten brick cladding is the Wonderwall - a Styrofoam insulation board bonded to a carrier sheet, fixed back to structure through the carrier, onto which brick slips are glued and the joints pointed. This brickwork is merely a decorative finish, at a considerable weight penalty, but nervously and rather awkwardly promoted to help OSF housing appear 'more traditional' to the public or the financier.

As John Miles had indicated earlier in his presentation, it is often the case in countries where OSF is commonplace, like Japan, that customers like their homes to look as though they are load bearing masonry structures. He was also concerned that OSF housing should not '… look like a biscuit tin'. (18) It is certain that products like Wonderwall will have a market, but there is an infinite array of architectural treatments for OSF between the sham of masonry construction and the cheapness of a metal box.

Leaving aside the fact that OSF can only escape the tyranny of the stackable box form if it is a stand alone low density structure, an urban architecture for OSF need not underestimate the public, or the financial institutions. The Housing Forum itself provides an insight on the issue of whether there will be a demand for new architectural solutions, but loses it in a box in chapter 2. This should be writ large:

'…there is a deeply rooted perception that the public wants 'traditional houses'. However, this may not be as resolute as is commonly believed. Whilst customer surveys suggest a high degree of comfort with traditional designs, it is impossible to assess the desire for something which does not commonly exist.' (19)

Of course second rate planners will no doubt be the first in many cases to insist that installations of OSF housing are brick finished.

That might be the initial architectural price to get a volume of developments built. Miles was as aware of this as Lavington, who both accepted that the key was mass customisation of volumetric product ranges, and they seemed to agree that '… there are no design-related reasons why OSF should not become more widely adopted.' (20) Indeed, there appeared to be no vocalised concern amongst the designers in the audience that standardisation will mean repetitive non-site sensitive solutions. Miles reiterated the point that site based house building was optimised to the extent that it tended to use the cheapest of heavy materials, and that OSF did not have that ability.

There seemed to be a confidence that designers could exercise flexibility and flair using the new systems of OSF, beyond a brick camouflage. If proof of the architectural possibilities were needed, from the volumetric planning and detailing to the appearance of OSF housing, it came at the end with Simon Allford's candid presentation of the work - past, present and future - of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.

Before that, Stephen Rogers, the chief geotechnical engineer for Roger Bullivant, reminded the seminar audience what it means to be innovative. Bullivant, '… the man has driven down the cost of piling.' (21) Innovations take financial backing to bring to market, and Bullivant has put his money where his mind is. His new methods, such as the Continual Helical Displacement Pile - shaped like a woodscrew and followed down with concrete without displacing ground to the surface as useless 'arisings' - show how you can make waste reduction interesting.

A great idea mechanised into a simple service allowing a few skilled operatives to work more productively with a minimum of effort.

Such site innovations are very necessary. All building needs foundations, or holding down systems, and Bullivant was innovating new methods for good and bad ground alike. The presumption that OSF is urban housing definitely means confronting the issue of building accurate and low cost footings and below ground services on poor ground, while having to deal with possible contamination. Rogers rattled through an arsenal of machinery engineered to deliver remediation, stabilisation, piling solutions and accurate ground works, all vital if OSF is to succeed. Optimal preparation of the site is where OSF interfaces with the ground of variable quality, and misfits will lose the production advantages through delay. Ground works for OSF should adopt the best practice available, so that false economies are robustly rejected, because below ground is where the uncertainty in construction will remain.

It was also striking that Rogers talked of poor ground in Greenfield situations, and the availability of minimal foundation systems to achieve individual structures. It was refreshing to be reminded that countryside is not necessarily any better as land for development below the surface - which tends today to be mythologized as a rural idyll to be protected from anyone who might want to live in it. Rogers showed that it would be incredibly easy to package a stand alone OSF house on adjustable legs with innovative and minimal holding down systems for different ground conditions. It was a pity that there was no services engineer speaking at the seminar to show that low density OSF might be considered incredibly sustainable in technological terms. Only rural land use seems taboo.

The prefabrication of servicing of stackable urban units was only cursorily addressed by the speakers at The Pre-Fabulous Home, and this might suggest a future event for the Building Centre Trust. Even Homing in on Excellence only hints at the potential for incorporating innovative servicing technologies, but is relatively silent on the issue of upgrading systems of services at differing periods to the design life of the foundations, the volumetric structure, construction finishes and fitted furnishings. Allford is evidently grappling with issues of building servicing, and they have obviously not been forgotten by The Housing Forum.

'Providers of prefabricated housing need to be very careful how they promote life expectancy to ensure that it is viewed in a realistic light, and that any comparisons made with traditional construction are fair.' (22)

It seems that one of the major advantages that could be designed into OSF housing is precisely the ease with which services could be accessed and upgraded over time in the twenty-first century. Most housing stock was built to be serviced one way or another using fossil fuels and mains supply. We have many more energy and technological options for building servicing today, and much more technology to install in the home, including Information Technology. Ian Abley 31 July 2002

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