Brief
The way we build homes is changing. In 2016, the world’s tallest modular apartment building opened in New York City. In 2018, Ikea’s experimental Space10 lab designed a modular home that cost less than $10,000. Even Disney’s new castle in Hong Kong was built using modular construction—its 13 towers were prefabricated off-site then craned into place.
Insight
Over the past few decades, modular housing has disrupted traditional construction. Now, a company called AUAR (which stands for Automated Architecture and is pronounced “our”) is betting that a localized construction process, more automation, and a robot can make modular construction even more irresistible.
In Bristol, AUAR has just completed a 107-square-foot cabin that was prefabricated using ABB robots (gigantic robotic arms similar to those used by car manufacturers) and assembled by builders on site. The cabin sits in the backyard of a house and will be used as a rehearsal studio by a cellist and double bassist, who were looking for a separate workspace.
The unit was completed in three weeks (with only one week on site) and cost about 30% less to build than a traditional U.K. home. It’s the first such unit AUAR has built using this modular timber building system, but the company has half a dozen more in the pipeline across the country.
Just like other forms of technology, like 3D printing homes, AUAR’s system provides a blueprint for more streamlined and sustainable homebuilding. It all starts with a sheet of timber that is roughly 47 x 8 x 23 inches. Once the design was set, the timber sheets were sent to a local manufacturing hub in Bristol, where an ABB robot milled hundreds of these sheets down to the right size and specifications
Then, they’re assembled into “blocks” so they’re able to fit together like pieces of a puzzle. “It’s like a CNC machine, but with more flexibility,” says AUAR cofounder and CEO Mollie Claypool.
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