Three ways of assembling a house
according to Niels Sandahl (EJ Badekabiner),
The tender documents and construction
originally also planned for the NCC Komplett
specifications within this strategy are not customised
concept but they ended up producing the
for any specific supplier or manufacturer. The
bathrooms in-house, thus opting for maximised
specifications will prescribe processes that are a
profit and decreasing risk in favourable periods.
3
mixture of more or less manual crafts, and the specifications will typically be sorted according to
Business concept and strategy
these. Some of the prescribed processes will perhaps be suited for industrial production, others
Procurement
will stretch the capability of the industry beyond its
The potential success of the different strategies
limits and some processes will fall totally outside the
into the industrialisation of the construction
viability of the production system. If the actual
industry is closely linked to the market relation
industrial potential of any project is to be exploited
and the processes involved in the development of
within this strategy, it will require the architect is at
projects. The strategy of traditional delivery in the
least partly familiar with the state of the art in order
development of a site is based on the contact to an
to prescribe processes adequate for industrialisation.
architect, either through direct commission, or in
The main advantages of this strategy – industrialised
the case of large public assignments, through a
or not – is of course, that the client as well as the
competition. The architect will typically focus on
architect end up with what they dreamt of, if the
the outline and spatial disposition by adopting a
client can afford it and there is enough time.
project oriented ‘top-down’ approach in the design.
The disadvantages are that:
In the design process, the architect will work towards an ideal shape and a spatial arrangement,
• If the budget is tight, they end up with less than
unique to the site and the brief. This process is
they could have had with another, more rational
typically staged, with the output of each stage being
strategy.
drawings and visualisations of increasing scale and
• The process is time-consuming and involves
detail. As the scale grows, the ongoing process of
much iteration, in both design and execution stages.
seeking technical approaches in order to solve the
• The industry is kept from specialisation and thus
spatial challenges among all known and imagined
on a very low technical level.
solutions is a constant game of trial and error and as such an iterative process. 3
In many ways, an opposite strategy is the turnkey
Interview with Niels Sandahl
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