Ensamble Factory / ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Text description provided by the architects. Ensamble Fabrica is the new prototyping facility and fabrication laboratory of Ensamble Studio in Madrid. Besides serving its purpose as a work place, it is a proof of concept that tests the hybrid steel-concrete construction technology our firm has developed in the past years, meant to innovate the way in which high-rise and long span structures are built, using prefabrication. The building is composed of twelve porticos, has a volume of 58x18x12m (length x width x height) and includes an open, four-story high hangar as well as office and other support spaces.
The galvanized steel formwork that makes trusses and columns is light and easy to fabricate and assemble to its final position, when it is filled with concrete and becomes a monolithic structure. This building in its making and future activity is meant to transform the way in which buildings are typically designed, engineered and built. Today the construction industry is one of the most obsolete and reticent to innovate. Buildings are built like decades ago. We transport the materials, tools and people to the place where the building is erected, the work is done locally, many times under adverse weather and working conditions; and the whole process is highly inefficient. The building is subject to the availability and market of the place where it lies, conditioned by it.
All this has limited the incorporation of the most advanced technologies of digital manufacturing, automation and robotics to the construction processes, that are mostly redundant and mechanical. Something that in other industries guarantees quality, efficiency, safety and economy, in construction still seems a distant dream. After years working as architects, builders and more recently, manufacturers of our own works, Ensamble Fabrica will be equipped to support our endeavors and projects, develop the spaces we dream of, delivering building parts to be quickly, safely and efficiently assembled in-situ, anywhere in the world.
