Towards modular and scalable housing

According to an estimate by the European Commission, 85 to 95% of the current building stock in Europe will still exist in 2050. Faced with this reality, it is essential to rethink housing so that it can meet economic, environmental and social needs. In its present form, it is often neither adapted to climate issues nor capable of accompanying social and demographic changes. We need to be able to renovate intelligently in order to reduce CO2 emissions and increase energy efficiency, but also to make housing more adaptable for its inhabitants. But what do these notions of "modularity" and "reversibility" mean and what impact do these changes have on construction?

Transforming the building according to one’s personal evolution

The building must be able to follow the rhythm of its inhabitants, adapting to family changes, births and aging, anticipating the chance of a drop in income or a disability. Changing the layout and function of rooms, building an extension and then changing its use, moving partitions, transforming the building to suit our needs and desires. While the idea is not new, there is a growing awareness of the importance of the occupants' well-being. French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, awarded the Pritzker Prize this year, have managed to highlight in their work the importance of well-being for the general public by combining generous spaces with limited budgets and environmentally-friendly techniques.

Changing the building’s purpose over time

The pandemic has made us aware that particular situations can, overnight, change the purpose of a building, transforming the home into an office or a place of education. Conversely, we have also seen projects to turn offices into housing, to meet accommodation needs by using the existing facilities. Repurposing a building without undertaking heavy work or large investments for the users will be all the easier if we turn to lightweight construction solutions. Moving partitions to enlarge rooms, as is often done in Japan, using light materials that allow buildings to be modular, designing with a view to reversibility of use and non-definitive construction, will become more and more frequent. Those solutions also help to accelerate the transition of the built environment to the circular economy. Lightweight implementation means easier deconstruction and disassembly, recycling or reuse of materials at the end of their life, a crucial issue for a sector that concentrates 40% of the world's resource consumption and relies on certain non-renewable raw materials.

Combining building functions ?

The third point is that modularity also responds to the need to intensify the use of buildings, made necessary in a context of increasing urban population, which brings with it the need for good living and social inclusion.

Intensifying the use of the same place could address the constraints of urban densification. Urban sprawl has shown its social limits (weakening of ties, longer commutes, etc.) as well as its environmental limits (land artificialisation, mobility infrastructure needs, etc.). With the growth in the number of city dwellers comes the need to optimize the existing infrastructure and to use all unoccupied spaces. However, to live harmoniously in a dense city, we must think in terms of superposition of the uses of a building. For example, a school could be transformed into a place of life and leisure in the evening or on weekends, and a train station into a place of meeting and work during the day. It is time to rethink and reweave the social link, to mix populations in a more inclusive way.

We should build and renovate today taking into account the modular, non-definitive and reversible nature of buildings, without presupposing a final purpose, and leaving the field open for future developments.

To support this paradigm shift, we need a change in mindset and methodology, switching to more transversal ways of working in the construction sector.

We can already see what BIM (Building Information Modeling) and its tools for modeling construction information have brought in terms of new ways of working together, made easier by digital technology. All the players in the value chain (architect, project manager, site manager, solutions provider such as Saint-Gobain, etc.) are involved from the very beginning of the project and share their working methods and the processes they deploy on the site. The result is a tremendous gain in time and efficiency, which will be the conditions for the in-depth transformation of the construction sector.

The multiple challenges we are facing today are also exciting opportunities!