Manufacturing the future
24 miles north of San Francisco, Factory OS is ‘manufacturing the future’ and they have found a suitably impressive building to do it in. Located on Mare Island, a former naval yard, Factory OS has converted a former warehouse for making submarines into a warehouse for manufacturing prefabricated housing.
Factory OS has big investment and big ambitions. The team behind it are frustrated by the lack of modernisation in the construction sector, rising house prices, rising construction costs and slow delivery. Their housing is 40% faster to construct, green by design, consistent quality and can deliver 20% — 30% savings over conventional construction.
This is exactly the type of modernisation the construction sector in California needs. Over the last decade, the state has witnessed increasingly high construction costs which along with the shortage of supply has created a chronic housing shortage in the area.
Despite the use of tech to improve the building process, there remains a high level of manual labour on the site. Factory OS signed a contract with the Carpenters Union to work at the factory constructing the modules. The warehouse is divided into three bays and workers are spread across the floor in what has a closer resemblance to Ford factory rather than high-tech construction.
The company recently announced investment from Google, who are looking to use the factory to provide them with temporary housing for employees at their San Jose campus. This is indicative of broader Google ambitions to use prefabricated construction and technology to design and build their proposed Mountain View campus, designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio.
