HTA Design has long been an expert in the offsite approach with many award-winning schemes under its belt. Rory Bergin, Partner at the multidisciplinary architect's practice, spoke to us about the shape of the sector.
Q: You have been working in the offsite sector for some time and must have seen many changes – what have been the main developments in recent years and how does the industry 'feel' presently?
Rory Bergin (RB): The main development for me has been the increased investment coming into the industry from outside the sector, and sometimes outside the country. This investment has mainly come into the Category 1 manufacturers and signals that there is widespread agreement that the Category 1 approaches solve a lot of problems and has a bright future. People within the construction sector are sometimes ambivalent about change because we see the difficulties of changing what we are already doing, and it will be interesting to see how the pressure on the industry to change from outside will play out in the coming years. If we can't change, or can't change quickly enough, there is a likelihood that investment will fall away.
Q: Interest in offsite construction – in all its guises – has never been higher with volumetric modular a preferred system of choice for many developers. For the uninitiated what does volumetric modular offer above a traditional approach?
RB: Volumetric construction offers a group of benefits, some of them obvious and some less so. Speed is the primary one, we had one of our designs completed in nine months, a 200-unit student building on a busy artery in London. This would have been impossible with traditional construction. Workers are more productive in factories because they can move to live near the factory and cycle to work, they can have a much better work/life balance, when they get to work, they are safe and dry and their tools are all there, and the work in the factories moves to them instead of them having to move around a complex construction site. We have found in our research that the embodied energy that goes into offsite construction is much reduced, and the final quality of the finishes is higher. Investors in projects like the certainty of delivery and the controlled process and the ESG focus on funding means that factories and projects that bring environmental and safety benefits are more likely to be funded.
Q: HTA is one of the leading architects working across the offsite sector and has an award-winning relationship with Tide Construction and Vision Modular Systems – what has made this such a successful team?
RB: We have been working together for over a decade and we understand each other very well, we understand their approach and they understand how we design buildings and get approvals and awards for the architecture. We are also multidisciplinary so we can offer design, landscape, planning, interiors, and sustainability all in one place, so that makes life easy for many of our clients, and they take a 'don't fix what isn't broken' approach to their design and construction teams. Over time we have seen many changes in factory production and regulatory hurdles, so the construction approach is still slightly different on every project even if it's coming from the same factory. Making things in factories doesn't mean that everything is fixed and can't be changed, construction isn't like that, we always need an element of flexibility, and the team understand this and work collaboratively to make things happen.
Q: From an aesthetic perspective, modular construction comes in for criticism from other architects as uniform and uninspiring – is this part of a systemic lack of understanding, even within the profession and design circles and how can that argument be dispelled?
RB: Some volumetric buildings, usually temporary buildings, are uninspiring, and architects need to look beyond that to see the potential of offsite construction. Making things in factories has nothing to do with design quality and definitely doesn't mean that great architecture isn't possible. Every other aspect of our lives has been improved by better manufacturing, whether it's in computing, flying, driving or the clothes we wear. Many of our projects have won awards both in the UK and internationally, and we see factory production as an ally to better buildings. Designers also need to tell manufacturers that design matters, and there is no point producing a very efficient module in a factory that doesn't help to make great homes for people, that's missing the point. There is a helpful tension between efficiency and great design and that's how it should be, architects shouldn't accept low quality, and neither should our clients, and collectively we need to push manufacturers to enable all of us to achieve well-designed buildings. Please don't mention shipping containers!
Q: The UK is forever battling a housing shortage and now has additional net zero carbon aims and climate pressures to contend with. With offsite construction's sustainable merits often under-reported, how can modular construction deliver more low carbon homes quickly and at scale?
RB: I am quite tired of clients saying things like 'let's set up a factory, how hard can it be' and 'we need to bring manufacturing to the site, that's where we need the jobs.' What both of these statements miss is that it's quite hard to set up a factory and no one would dream of setting up a factory to make clothes or computers, so why would anyone think that setting up a factory to build homes is easy? It isn't. To scale up we need to provide a pipeline of work for manufacturers who are already in the market that is designed with production in mind, not based on traditional construction. There is a different mindset needed to design for manufacturing, and schools of architecture aren't teaching it. Planners also need to be educated on this subject, they seem to think that repetition is somehow a bad thing, when it clearly isn't. Many of our best loved places built by Georgians or Victorians are quite repetitive but with some lovely details. Designers and planners should learn that a certain amount of repetition is helpful to bring costs down and to lower the environmental footprint and can still be perfectly lovely if designed and detailed well. If we bring the projects to the factories regularly and work with them from an early stage in the design, we can work together successfully.
Q: According to recent data from the University of Cambridge and Edinburgh Napier University, volumetric modular systems can produce less CO2 than traditional methods of building homes – these results were based on two HTA projects – can you say a little about the study and how those savings are achieved?
RB: This research is still work in progress, but I would say that the key to environmental improvements is in optimisation of materials. It's as much about careful design and using as little material as possible as it is about the choice of materials. We are buildings using steel and concrete, traditional materials, but optimised using factory production rather than the relatively rough and ready methods of on-site construction. The accuracy of factory production is much greater than traditional, for example, over 19 storeys we expect a tolerance of +- 3mm. That is near impossible in traditional construction. The other issue is waste, in traditional construction waste is something that happens, and it's hard to find and allocate responsibility for it, with offsite construction it's obvious where waste is happening because up to 90% of construction is happening in the same place supervised by the same people.
Q: The future of offsite manufacture seems assured with more government support than ever before – where do you see the offsite sector and the architect's role within it, heading over the next 18 months?
RB: We expect to continue to work on an ever-growing portfolio of projects designed for offsite manufacturing with an ever-increasing group of clients and manufacturers. It has been interesting to see in recent months that several large contracting organisations have invested in offsite companies, with Hill, ISG and JRL all becoming owners of factories. This is a good sign that the mainstream construction sector recognises the long-term potential of factories to add value. We also see the growth in the use of two-dimensional panel systems and volumetric pods for bathrooms for lower rise projects or smaller schemes. There isn't a one-size fits all answer to every design problem, but I have yet to see a project where offsite doesn't have something to offer the project, either in terms of speed of delivery, reduced disruption for residents or environmental benefits.
For more information visit: www.hta.co.uk
Read the full article, go to the Offsite Magazine
