Maybe this works because they're building apartments so tiny they can be carried on a truck.<p>There's a more successful concept - prefab bathrooms and modular kitchens. See "ameripod.com" (bathrooms). This reduces on-site labor on the parts of the building that are labor-intensive. It's much cheaper to build a bathroom in a factory, install it as a unit, and plug it in. In a factory, you can hold tolerances and all the parts fit.
Bathrooms are a convenient size for trucking purposes, too. Moving standard-width loads is cheap and routine.<p>Making the exterior walls part of the module means more exterior seams. Building shells aren't expensive. Steelwork and exterior walls go up fast. Building steel and concrete boxes is a solved problem. Most of the time and money go into interior details.
They failed to mention that this project is close to <i>two years</i> behind.<p>The modular construction project has been such an abject failure that the other two building projects on the site have broken ground with conventional steel frame construction.
A comment on the article page links to a description of how construction stalled on recriminations of flawed designs and construction problems:<p><a href="http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.ca/2014/09/in-dispute-over-stalled-modular-tower.html" rel="nofollow">http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.ca/2014/09/in-dispute-ov...</a>
I live across of it, and I have to say it has the grace you'd expect of a 60's housing project in the eastern bloc. The rendering is quite flattering.
For background, here's some info on Walt Disney World's Contemporary Resort (1971) that was built with a similar technique:<p><a href="http://www.yesterland.com/contemporary.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.yesterland.com/contemporary.html</a>
"Imagine a future where..."<p>I guess everything old is new again. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier</a>
I'm on a phone so didn't fig into the differences which must be huge but china has built a few large projects using prefab techniques and keep breaking time to complete records. Example <a href="http://inhabitat.com/200-chinese-workers-erect-a-30-storey-prefabricated-hotel-in-just-15-days-video/" rel="nofollow">http://inhabitat.com/200-chinese-workers-erect-a-30-storey-p...</a>
My Dad has worked in the modular construction industry since before I was born and it's quite an interesting method.<p>It allows things to be done at the same time, so whilst the groundwork and any preparation is being done on site, the modules for the building can be being built in a factory.<p>It's a fairly popular method in the UK, whether it's constructed entirely modularly or using modular parts like bathroom pods (prefabricated bathrooms).<p>The uses are fairly varied too, it's been used for hotel bathrooms, prison cells, McDonalds restaurants, sections of Tesco supermarkets, petrol station shops, hospitals and schools. I've probably missed a few, but you get the idea.<p>It's very weird to step into a bathroom pod when it's at the end of the production line and hooked up to water and electricity for testing. When you shut the door, you'd have no idea that you were in a factory (besides the noise) .
A giant project like this just opened in LA, One Santa Fe<p><a href="http://www.onesantafeliving.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.onesantafeliving.com/</a><p>The place looks huge from a distance because it's so long<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=one+santa+fe+apartments&tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=one+santa+fe+apartments&tbm=...</a><p>But, I went in to look at the apartments and they're boring as hell which is sad because they're in the LA Arts District which is full of amazing lofts (similar to SF's SOMA District).
I got a laugh out of this:<p>> the kind of line assembly popularized by Henry Ford's T-Birds<p>Henry Ford never saw the T-bird (Thunderbird): he died eight years before it was released. Of course the author meant the Model T, but that such an error about a major milestone in American history slipped through editing is pretty amazing--like crediting William Boeing with the invention of the airplane.