What if you could anticipate and solve construction problems before building your home?

Socioeconomic challenges such as rapid urbanisation and affordable housing require a major mind shift. Government housing is not the answer, nor are ever-expanding, unsustainable informal settlements.

A multidisciplinary team from the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology has set out to find a better solution. The ProtoBuilding Research Programme aims to reshape how we think about developing homes for today and tomorrow. By working smarter, UP believes, more sustainable solutions that promote prosperity for all can be realised. 

“With ProtoBuilding, we aim to develop new transdisciplinary processes where participants are connected from the onset of the project, and a design thinking process is used to develop optimal solutions that are fully integrated,” says Dr Schalk Grobbelaar, senior lecturer at UP and chairperson of the York Timbers Chair in Wood Structural Engineering. “Think of your cellphone: even though the model is standardised and optimised, you can add creativity for a personalised experience.”

First, create the problem

The ProtoBuilding process starts with a transdisciplinary team that creates a design problem. A design is developed for the problem, and the building is constructed. Once the building has been completed, the solution is reviewed, then the team starts again, developing an improved design problem and continuing with the process.

Apart from disciplines such as architecture, construction and engineering, students from fields as diverse as marketing, industrial design and geomatics are involved in the problem-solving process.

A systems-thinking approach is used in a continuous loop to allow for learning and experimentation through learning-by-doing. This facilitates hands-on, task-oriented, problem-solving education. From a research perspective, it creates the opportunity to test assumptions, develop new theories, test them, review them and start again. 

Typical research questions the team tries to answer include:

• How can we use resources optimally to limit our impact?
• How can we design the building to be adaptable in terms of expansion or reuse?
• How can we improve recycling?
• How can we make the building thermally efficient?
• How can we make the building easy and quick to construct?
• How can we reduce the cost of the building?

Real-world problems, not theory

Projects that have undergone this scrutiny are real-world problems experienced by the university, such as a “supershed” to house and facilitate educational experiences and activations, a guardhouse and offices. Engineered timber is used for all the projects.

“Next we will develop a low-cost house for Simile, a settlement in Sabie, Mpumalanga, in collaboration with York Timbers,” Grobbelaar says. Collaborating with the Gauteng Department of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment is looking promising.

“ProtoBuilding is partially based on the WikiHouse concept, which is a digital construction kit. However, there are a few key differences: ProtoBuilding is material agnostic and there is less focus on developing designs that can be shared.”

While the ProtoBuilding philosophy is similar to prototyping, the objective is not to create a product that can be mass-produced but rather to develop a process of continuous experimentation and learning. 

“The purpose is to create a process that will promote the integration of various design philosophies using systems thinking; this may lead to knowledge development and sharing,” says Grobbelaar. “In turn, this will encourage the development of sustainable buildings with improved functionality while improving construction and project management productivity.”

He considers this “a beacon of hope for the built environment”.

Why this research matters

Construction projects are complex, transdisciplinary endeavours with specific deliverables and diverse stakeholder requirements. There is not much leeway for innovation or learning on the job. Through ProtoBuilding, the construction industry could continuously improve construction and project management tools, methods, materials and designs, while integrating sustainability (social, environmental and economic) in their project development and execution.

This article was sponsored by the University of Pretoria.