Architectural Engineering: Engineering Approaches for the Design for Manufacturing and Assembly for the Housing Sector

Prefabrication is spreading in the Global North due to the necessity to build, in a short time, a large volume of new housing for an exponentially growing global population, while at the same time achieving high standards in terms of aesthetic, structural safety, and energy performance. Design for manufacturing and assembly is at the base of prefabrication. Among the variety of available prefab technologies, those based on lightweight steel profiles are particularly well suited for low and mid-rise housing. Although this technology is spreading, for it to be applied at a large-scale, it still requires to be optimized to reduce the amount of material and fabrication waste, lower fabrication time, and reduce costs. The optimization requires understanding and improvement of the mechanical behavior. It is worth considering that the structure’s cost can reach up to 20% of the total expenditure and its associated embodied carbon can make up as much as 40% of the overall construction’s embodied carbon. Therefore, favouring a composite system that can also facilitate achieving good energy performances with lower embodied carbon is paramount. In this framework, this paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary international research project aiming to optimize a housing system’s mechanical and environmental performance for mass production. It presents the experimental objectives and results and the impacts that design decisions have made on the environmental footprint of the developed system. The presented interdisciplinary experimental approach, which is characteristic of architectural engineering, could be used in the future for the development of further innovative systems.