Chapter 244: Chapter 240 Sector Design
Speaking of prefabricated building modules, one cannot avoid mentioning mobile modular buildings.
This robust technology, capable of constructing a hospital within days in the original world, not only relies on strong industrial and infrastructure capabilities but also highlights the excellence of the technology itself.
All functional modules are prefabricated and assembled in the factory, requiring only ground leveling and installation of necessary foundation pile holes on site, enabling the construction of a house in a very short time. It’s a highly practical rapid construction technique for emergencies.
Moreover, the built houses are by no means temporary shelters; when necessary, these prefabricated modular houses can last many years.
The most famous of these prefabricated modular houses is undoubtedly the Khrushchev apartment from the former Soviet Union era. Although from a modern perspective, they seem quite rudimentary or even crude, at the time, this rapid construction technology indeed addressed a substantial housing issue for the Soviet people.
So much so that this technology was even introduced to China, which also actively constructed many Khrushchev apartments.
Although they are ugly, they truly are practical, at least solving the housing social issues for both the Soviet Union and China at the time.
Furthermore, before Perfikot’s crossing, there was a not-quite-joking joke that Khrushchev apartments were considered small-sized simple residential buildings, using prefabricated modules. Many felt these buildings were crude and poor in quality.
However, these old structures have stood the test of seventy years, remaining intact even today, and even withstand the fire power test when the Soviet Union’s two dissenters clashed using 152mm artillery.
Compared to those so-called commercial or residential buildings, Khrushchev apartments have proven their reliability and integrity with facts.
Therefore, Perfikot doesn’t share the common view of these buildings as ugly and small. Instead, she perceives them as traces of an era and greatly appreciates their design aesthetic.
It might sound ridiculous, as modular buildings are akin to an industrial assembly line, so where does the design aesthetic come from?
However, in reality, designing a low-cost building template, replicable quickly while meeting most people’s living needs, is by no means easy.
There are no excessive decorations because cost-saving is essential.
They don’t have elevators and only have five floors as regulations in the Soviet Union mandated that buildings above five floors must have elevators, hence the Khrushchev apartment only has five floors.
The simple structure facilitates easy installation and construction, as all modules were prefabricated in factories, coupled with overly simple structure allowing workers to assemble them quickly even without blueprints, finishing a building within a week.
Although architects criticized it as design killing architectural aesthetics, transforming architects into craftsmen and making architectural templates that don’t require architects, Perfikot argues that solving problems equals good design.
First, address existence, then pursue optimization.
So after returning to the laboratory, Perfikot also pulled out new blueprints and shelter design plans, pondering how to design a building model that can be prefabricated and easily installed for application in shelter construction.
Firstly, it should be, like the Khrushchev apartment, easily installed and low-cost, and does not require complex structures or lavish decorations, nor for the designer to demonstrate their talent and artistic cells, just ensuring the most basic residential needs.
Hence, recalling the Khrushchev apartment design blueprints she had once seen, Perfikot left some parameters on the paper.
square meters for a one-bedroom, 43 square meters for a two-bedroom, 54 square meters for a three-bedroom; kitchen 6 square meters, bathroom 4 square meters; indoor net height 2.6 meters.
These were the design parameters of the Khrushchev apartment back then, with each parameter tightly designed and calculated by Soviet designers ensuring each centimeter of space was perfectly adequate.
Of course, while the design was like this, the actual usage found these sizes inadequate, one of the points most criticized about Khrushchev apartments.
So after drawing the Khrushchev apartment’s layout structure from her memory, Perfikot enlarged these data by 20%.
Though it doesn’t seem like much, it’s relatively less cramped to use.
Besides these, architectural structure modifications need to be made, such as independent bathrooms being necessary for Khrushchev apartments but not so much for the shelters Perfikot designs.
After all, times are different; in the Soviet era, independent bathrooms were necessities, but talking about independent bathrooms to workers in the 18th century? Luxurious.
Moreover, considering the overall design of the shelter, kitchen and bathroom doesn’t need to be individually designed, which from some perspective adds potential safety hazards.
Ultimately, Perfikot wasn’t designing a city but a shelter whose primary function is solving human survival issues in an extreme cold apocalypse climate, and the quality of life isn’t an immediate concern.
Especially since Perfikot also provided for expansion space, allowing enhancements to improve the shelter residents’ quality of life once everything is stabilized after establishment.
Before that, it’s best to focus on surviving first.
Thus, after clarifying this concept, Perfikot canceled independent kitchen and bathroom for each individual living space.
However, she retained those spaces by isolating them separately while leaving water supply pipes and sewer outlets, giving residents living there some leeway.
As for the dining, bathing needs, and toilet problems of shelter residents, Perfikot adopted the design of communal facilities, concentrating them all to service an entire block.
However, according to Perfikot’s design plan, calling it a sector might be more appropriate.
Perfikot’s design uses a sector area composed of three different specifications of houses for every hundred households, with public dining halls, bathhouses, and toilets to meet residents’ living needs.
One shelter layer consists of three sectors, accommodating three hundred households per layer.
Additionally, other public facilities will be constructed, but according to Perfikot’s plan, they are for the entire layer to use, rather than for a single sector.
According to the current calculation for a hundred households with five hundred people in Fjord Town, it means roughly one thousand five hundred people will reside on one shelter layer.
And to accommodate ten thousand people, at least seven such layers would need to be constructed.