World's Tallest Prefab Building Leads Modular Boom

Prefab Construction in NYC

BROOKLYN — Trucks are expected to arrive at the Atlantic Yards Thursday carrying the first modules of what will become the tallest prefabricated building in the world.

Coming from a factory at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the roughly 930 steel-framed boxes are the basic building blocks for Forest City Ratner’s B2, an eco-friendly, 32-story tower with 363 rental units, half of which will be reserved for low, moderate and middle-income families.

B2, which is expected to open in December 2014, is just one of many high-profile prefab projects rolling into the city.

Many local developers are seizing on modular housing as a way to get projects completed more quickly and efficiently. A shorter construction window means tenants can move in faster, which helps cut financing costs and reduces the impact on neighbors because there’s less noise, dust and debris.

“We're getting phone calls like crazy from developers who see [prefab] as a panacea for the plumber who doesn't show up or the electrician who screws up everything,” said Peter Gluck of Gluck+, the firm that designed the Stack, a sleek seven-story, 28-unit residence in Inwood. It's the city’s first prefab steel and concrete multi-story building and is expected to open its doors to renters in January.

A four-story modular housing prototype — designed for the city’s Office of Emergency Management to provide homes after disasters like Sandy — will rise in Downtown Brooklyn’s Cadman Plaza for public tours starting in January.

And a developer is expected to close next month on the land on East 27th Street for the city’s much talked about micro-unit contest. There, a nine-story modular building with 55 units, from 250 to 370 square feet, is expected to rise for low and middle-income New Yorkers — without any direct city subsidies — in a year’s time. That's a significantly shorter window than conventional construction.

“You increase the speed of construction and decrease the amount of anguish,” Gluck said. “The allure of prefabrication is you eliminate that mess of 20 different trades interfacing at different times. So, the thought of having 80 percent of the building arrive in finished condition is attractive.”

The Stack’s modular units were built in three months at a Pennsylvania factory — in a controlled environment protected from any inclement weather — while the foundation was being laid at 4857 Broadway. It took just a few weeks to deliver and stack the modules and then three months to seal the building and connect the plumbing and electricity, Gluck said.

Prefab projects tend to be five to eight months quicker than similar, non-prefabricated constructions, he said.

Though the Stack's rents haven’t been finalized, studios are expected to start at around $1,800 a month, one-bedrooms at $2,400, two-bedrooms at $3,200 and three-bedrooms at $3,900, said Cliff Finn of Douglas Elliman Development Marketing.

Though modular housing has potential drawbacks for developers due to being less flexible with layouts, the units are much quieter for residents since each one has its own floor and ceiling rather than just an 8-inch slab between apartments, he noted.

“Anyone that's lived in a new construction rental will tell you they can hear through the walls,” Finn said.

While developers can save on financing because of accelerated schedules, modular construction isn’t necessarily cheaper to build. As with any construction, it depends on the materials used.

“Modular building is associated with cheap, substandard mobile homes,” said James Garrison, who teaches at Pratt Institute's architecture program.

“The reality of it is, it's no more or less cheap or insubstantial than any other form of construction. The way we see it, it's not a product; it's an approach.”

Garrison's firm won the city's post-disaster prototype competition. It is also working on a prefab hotel for an undisclosed Williamsburg location that will have “multiple courtyards.”

There are some challenges that prefab construction poses — the size of modules is dictated by what the city's aging bridges and narrow streets will allow trucks to carry to the site — usually loads up to 14-feet wide.

There's also the complicating factor of the construction being done out of state. The city is still figuring out how to inspect buildings when they are being manufactured out of New York. Third-party inspectors are being used for now, architects said.

There are also issues with zoning rules that butt up against prefab specifications.

Ammr Vandal, of nArchitects, which created the winning design for the My Micro NY competition in 2013, said, for instance, that zoning allows for an 80-foot-tall building, but because each module has a thicker space between units, the building needs to be 85 feet tall.

Also, the city requires setbacks, or tiers, at 10 feet and 15 feet, which don't fit neatly with the building's prefabricated construction, she explained.

As the buzz around modular construction grows, Capsys, the Brooklyn Navy Yard factory where the micro-unit project is being built, has seen an influx in business, especially from younger architects.

“Modular just makes sense to folks growing up with the looming energy crisis and global warming,” said Tom O’Hara of Capsys.

“Our construction system builds tighter building envelopes, better quality control, safer working conditions. It just makes sense.”

Zimmer Amy (2013 December, 11) World's Tallest Prefab Building Leads Modular Boom Retrieved on December 13, 2013 From www.dnainfo.com

Modular Construction is on the Rise in New York City

Imagine skyscrapers up to 32 stories tall being built in factories and erected in half the time of traditional buildings. It's happening right now in New York City. Modular construction is quickly becoming the preferred way of building both commercial and residential buildings in New York City.

New York is the most highly populated city in the United States today with an amazing 27,547 residents per square mile. That in itself creates a demand not only for more housing but space efficient, environmentally friendly and cost efficient housing. By utilizing the modular construction process, residents in New York can receive a high quality home that meets these needs.

The concept of building modular homes to accommodate almost 9 million New York residents isn't as new as one might think. However, the idea of building 30 story modular homes is a fairly new and an extremely innovative idea. Recently the Governor of New York approved the building of some 55 micro modular apartments in part of an effort to make room for the residents of New York. The micro apartments are smaller than most apartments in New York but their small and compact size will be an excellent choice for singles or couples without children. The micro modular studio apartments with 1 bath range in size from 250 to 370 sq. ft. Additionally, modular construction allowed the apartments to be constructed in a fraction of the time it would take for traditional construction, resulting in earlier occupancy and significant savings.

Micro apartments and other types of modular housing are built off-site much in the same way as traditional homes built on-site. The major difference about building homes inside a climate controlled building instead of outdoors is that it's cleaner for the environment, there are no delays due to poor weather conditions, entire buildings or major components can be reused and it is often more cost effective.

Once each of the modular homes or apartments is nearly complete in the factory, they are transported to the job site and installed before applying final interior and exterior finishes and connecting utilities. Because factory construction and site work occur simultaneously, New York residents can enjoy the benefits of a quality home, constructed much faster and efficiently.

More Units Going Up in a Snap

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Workers in Pennsylvania install walls for modular units, the building blocks for a seven-story apartment on a lot in Inwood.

A vacant lot on Broadway between Academy and 204th Streets in Inwood is littered with rubble and concrete pilings. But in a matter of weeks, this 50-foot-wide sand pit will be transformed into a seven-story apartment building, with finished bathrooms, maple cabinetry and 10 terraces. It is not a magic trick, but rather the result of modular, or prefabricated, construction.

Ryan Collerd for The New York Times

A worker in Pennsylvania welds together steel for the modular units.

A technique in which a building is manufactured piecemeal on a factory assembly line, trucked to the construction site and erected much the way Legos are, modular construction is gaining popularity across New York City. It is not new, but it has never gained much of a foothold here, in part because of its association with low-cost housing like mobile homes. That perception is changing; the city does not track modular data, but at least anecdotally, more developers and architects are embracing its ethos.

“Historically, people have had negative associations with modular construction,” said David J. Burney, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Design and Construction, “and certainly within the design industry, it didn’t have much cachet. But there has been a sea change, and now there is much less of a distinction over whether a building has been assembled off-site or on-site.”

Ryan Collerd for The New York Times

The lot in Inwood, between Academy and 204th Streets, where the modular building will stand.

The announcement late last year that Forest City Ratnerwould use modular construction to build its first residential tower at the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn helped to shine a spotlight on this method of construction, and New York City, in announcing the winner of its first microunit apartment building design contest, has chosen a modular design.

The trend toward modular does pose issues, particularly for New York City’s powerful construction unions. It means exporting some construction jobs to factories outside New York, and while many modular factories are unionized, the employees tend to earn less than traditional construction workers. For its part, Forest City Ratner announced that the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York had created a modular division to help build its 32-story high-rise, and it joined with Skanska USA in creating a modular company at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“Any change in the way you do business involves some concerns and issues,” said Richard T. Anderson, the president of the New York Building Congress, a nonprofit organization that represents professionals in the construction industry. “If for New York City construction, business as usual is a challenge, you need to change some of the basic ingredients, and labor and management needs to address this.”

Gary LaBarbera, the president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, declined to comment.

As for the $13 million Inwood project, it will consist of 56 modules that are under construction in Berwick, Pa. The modules will be combined to create 28 apartments: 6 studios, 6 one-bedrooms, 14 two-bedrooms and 2 three-bedrooms. Twenty percent of the rentals will rent below market rate, and the project, which is scheduled to open this summer, will also include 3,600 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

While the facades of modular buildings can be anything from red brick to glass, “we chose to express the stacked modules,” Thomas Gluck, a principal of the architecture firm Gluck+, said in describing the boxy design. The building, in homage to its origin, is named Broadway Stack.

Jeffrey M. Brown, the chief executive of Brown Hill Development of Huntingdon, Pa., which is building the project with Kim Frank, the owner of the real estate finance company MCA, said, “We always wanted to use modular construction for this project.”

The two acquired the property in 2008 and have been working from the outset with Gluck+, which also has an ownership stake.

It is taking four months to manufacture the modules, during which time the team has been building the foundation at the site. “The factory has been able to create 28,000 square feet of residential space in the same amount of time it has taken us to construct 6,000 square feet of cellar space,” Mr. Gluck said.

On successive nights beginning in early April, the modules, which have steel and concrete frames, will be trucked four to five at a time to the building site from the factory.

On each of the following mornings for about four weeks, an enormous crane will stack the modules. Workers will then “zip” them up, connecting one to the next, and to the building’s plumbing and electrical systems.

The project is expected to take 9 months from start to finish, compared with 16 to 18 months if construction had been done on-site. “Because it takes half the time,” Ms. Frank said, “we can rent out the units and generate income much quicker, and the carrying costs are lower.”

Mr. Brown concurred, pointing out that if traditional on-site construction had been used, the project would have cost an additional 10 percent to 20 percent.

Because modular units are built on an assembly line — which is a quarter-mile in length at the Pennsylvania factory — there are constraints, including having to choose the paint colors, finishes, appliances and every other detail upfront. It is also impossible to make substantial changes partway through the construction, and because each module must be structurally sound, the walls and floors of the buildings tend to be thicker than in on-site construction.

There are other differences as well, said Peter L. Gluck, another principal of Gluck+, who began designing and building modular projects in the 1960s. “In the first three weeks of production they manufacture one entire module, which is basically like getting to see a full-scale mock-up of your project,” he said. “We can watch the entire building process and do quality control, correcting something immediately.”

With traditional construction, oversight is more time-consuming because someone must be on the site at all times to catch mistakes. “With prefab,” said Peter Gluck, “everything is done the same, so once we make a fix, it is fixed permanently.”

Also, because construction takes place indoors, there are no delays or damages to the material from inclement weather.

Modular construction may provide sustainability benefits, too. “We can recycle everything, all of the packaging materials, the gypsum, every piece of steel,” said Tom O’Hara, the director of business development at the Capsys Corporation, a modular builder based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, “because none of our products get wet or are affected by the elements.”

DeLuxe Building Systems, which has been actively pursuing New York City developers, has several projects in the works, including an 11-story Harlem rental in the pre-construction phase; it is also in discussions with a developer of two 24-story rental towers.

“We are starting to hear from a lot of developers about modular building,” said Stephen G. Kliegerman, the president of Halstead Property Development Marketing, which was hired to market a 12-story modular rental building in Manhattan south of 96th Street.

Most of the modular projects in the works are rentals. “It is still relatively untested,” Mr. Kliegerman said, “so there needs to be some kind of track record before developers will feel comfortable using it to build condominiums.”

Mr. O’Hara of Capsys said his firm was “getting a dozen calls a week from developers who want to explore what is, for them, a new type of technology.” He added, “There is a vibrancy in the air now that we haven’t felt in a long time.”

Written By: Julie Satow

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/realestate/inwood-prefab-homes-win-converts-in-new-york.html?_r=0