FAB house

FAB house is a modular house type designed for Urban Spash, with 10 built at Smiths Dock, North Shields for Urban Splash’s wider joint venture development with Places for People. The site, which is now a thriving neighbourhood, is a former thriving shipyard that laid dormant for the preceding 30 years.

We worked in collaboration with architect George Clarke and the factory design team to establish process-led design strategies that maximised the detailing opportunities presented by volumetric modular manufacturing. 

Factory-based volumetric modular manufacturing is a very different process to on-site construction. For all the efficiencies and quality improvements modular offers, the building’s detailing must respond to constraints that do not affect traditional construction. For example, the repetition and rhythm of a factory line requires consideration of assembly sequencing that would not affect on-site construction in the same way; and the constraints of the transport network limit the external dimensions of the modules. 

Factory made housing also presents significant opportunities that we explored in the design. The precision engineering a factory environment offers allowed us to reveal ‘free detail’ in the finishes. The timber ceiling joists (which form the top cassette of the ground floor module) are built to millimetre perfect tolerances as standard. Our design revealed them, with the acoustic and fire separation provided by the floor cassette of the first floor module above. This increased the floor to ceiling heights to 2.9m and introduced a depth of high quality detailing that would otherwise be concealed behind plasterboard. Similarly the face finished plywood staircase is treated as a sculptural object and inserted into the open plan reception space where the extremely tight construction tolerances can be appreciated.

Our design learned from ShedKM’s modular housing for Urban Splash. We moved all services connections to the outside of the property behind the cladding to minimise the need for trades to enter the house after installation, and to facilitate future maintenance without requiring access. This in turn increased the depth of the facade giving a sense of weight and permanence not commonly associated with modular builds. This is emphasised with the specification of dark grey exteriors, offset by the Corten steel shroud around the porch, which creates shelter from the elements whilst referencing the site’s industrial heritage.