MOD X

Start date and time

Monday 12 November 2018

to Wednesday 14 November 2018

Location

Boston and New York, U.S.A.

The Mod-X workshop will bring together experts and advocates from a Sweden, Japan, the UK and Poland with a groups from the US to discuss product and business platform strategies and tactics in order to realize greater market penetration and improvement for the volumetric modular industry internationally.

The initial research has shown the importance of balancing a sensitivity for the specific challenges and innovations of a given context with a search for paradigms and best practices that transcend regulatory and market boundaries. For example, the US industry is large and highly diversified; Sweden’s volumetric modular industry is dominated by wood systems while Japan’s is dominated by light gauge steel; Poland’s volumetric modular industry has focused on export; in the UK, publicly funded research has had a major impact on the industry, and will likely impact the emerging industry in Australia.

Mod-X’s organizers and curators, Professors Ryan Smith and Ivan Rupnik recently completed an assessment of the global volumetric modular industry, comparing the current state of the worlds largest volumetric modular industry, in the US, with a number of industries abroad, including Sweden, Japan, the UK, Poland and Australia.

Supported by the Modular Building Institute, this assessment has shown the importance of understanding volumetric modular as part of a larger ecology of material flows, regulatory frameworks, and socio-economic and cultural trends, among other factors, on a local and global scale as well as the need for more intensive exchanges between the global hotspots of this industry. By bringing together the community of experts that has formed during this initial research through an intensive workshop, Smith and Rupnik will construct a framework for helping the volumetric modular industry internationally move forward.

Mila Duncheva was invited to present the UK perspective on offsite construction innovation.