International Conference on Factory Built Housing:
Innovation in Home Manufacturing (November 2005, 43p)
The idea of building homes in factories has taken hold in
many parts of the world. Factory
building is an emerging or growing part of the housing markets
in many of the most
industrialized nations and often for the same reasons, including:
cost efficiency, increased
quality and speed of site assembly. In these and other areas,
factory building is one of the
most promising approaches for meeting the global need for
quality, affordable shelter.
While the factors that spur industrialization of housing
may be the same across borders, the
resulting form of the technology, the market entry point,
home design and other aspects that
characterize the local form of factory built housing are far
from uniform. Worldwide, factory
building is differentiated by a rich variety of building methods,
materials and degree of
automation. Factory building practices have evolved in
areas such as Asia, the EU and North America with
surprisingly little cross fertilization, despite in some
cases, similarities in building practices (for example,
the pervasive use of wood framing in both Scandinavia
and the US/Canada).
The objective of the work which this report describes
was to evaluate the opportunity and need for, and
potential benefits of, an international conference on
factory built housing. An additional objective was to
begin to characterize the content and structure of such
a conference. The method used was to conduct a
planning summit, bringing together delegations
representing a range of countries, to debate the merits
and content of a potential conference or other means of achieving
the goal of sharing
information on factory building globally.
The Summit participants concluded that the best means of
exchange for learning about
international innovations in factory building would be a conference
with a dual technical and
business orientation.
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