This approach to urban housing allows the errors of the traditional construction process to be transposed into a factory environment. This heavily reduces errors that would be expensive to rectify on site. The factory conditions are safer, healthy and more accurate and thus allowed quality production of the dwelling units. It is hoped further use of units such as these will result in economies of scale that will ensure this approach is more financially attractive to developers of the future. This approach also raises questions regarding the extent to which the levels of prefabrication could be increased. In addition to the residential ‘cell’, prefabrication could present new solutions for the erection of circulation routes, including balconies, stair and lift towers. In Europe, studies of the residential cell and the flexibility of space have lead to architects offering ways of allowing the dwelling unit to ’flex’ in reaction to its occupants requirements. Traditionally, we have been limited to a partitioning between floors.

‘Delving deeper into the redefinition of inhabited space, starting from a greater polyfunctioning and polyvalence of spaces, as well as the eventual co-habitation of various subtypes, in happy combination; parameters which allude, in any event, to a strategic articulation between usage, technique and space.’

Gausa, Manuel, Housing: New Alternatives New Systems, Birkhaüser Publications, Barcelona, 1998.