Modularity in architecture and the relevance:

Let me share an experience with you, which I encountered recently. I had to extent my house to add a bedroom and a couple of powder rooms. That reminded me literally how out-dated and old is our construction and building design techniques. Making dwellings of all kind has always been there since the origin of mankind, but how old the first man made dwelling, no one knows for sure. And even if we know it, it doesn't make any difference now. Because although everything evolved in course of time, the human dwelling and its design and construction characteristics have not changed much except for the sheer size of the thing. The evolution in terms of material might have reached somewhere, but the technique is jeopardizing all the developments and innovation. It’s the system which has got to change, the way we look at buildings and architecture in general has to change. Knocking down walls, building new ones, enormous time and money wastage, the dust and the delay and in the end the overall stability is also at stake, just what happened with my house. Well why can’t we move on. Imagine if you could just re-arrange or re-configure a couple of panels and the building just grows without even leaving any correction or modification marks.

Also while dealing with the wiring and plumbing lines, it was all a mess and the major part is the labour spent on it. 65% of what I spent was just the labour charge. I was wondering if the buildings had the precision and standardization of an automobile, the time and money that I could save would have been immense. People do talk a lot about sustainability and efficiency, but in the case of a renovation or an extension, what about the energy, material and the time getting wasted? And what about the initial effort and energy wasted on the structure in the first place? If industrial precision and standardization can be incorporated, then it is also possible to make building units with integrated solar panel and thus making the future green and secured. It can also be enforced as a law and since the production and use will be more, amount spent on the manufacture could also be reduced.