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At Atlantic Yards, Ready to Test Plans for Prefab Tower


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/ny...nyregion&_r=1&

In a warehouse deep inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a small team of carpenters, electricians and engineers have secretly labored for months on an assembly system for turning tubular steel chassis into fully equipped apartments that can be stacked and bolted together at a construction site.

On Dec. 18, they will be put to the test, as Bruce C. Ratner, chief executive of Forest City Ratner, breaks ground for the world’s tallest prefabricated, or modular, building, a 32-story residential tower at Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street. It is the first of 15 planned modular buildings at the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards site; some are to rise to 50 stories.

If it works, Mr. Ratner and his partners say, they will be at the forefront of a new industry.

It is an ambitious and risky undertaking, more so than the $1 billion Barclays Center arena that Mr. Ratner opened there three months ago.

Currently, the tallest modular building is a 25-story dormitory in Britain. In the United States, modular buildings rarely go above 10 stories. The cost of steel bracing has been prohibitive.

But next spring, 125 workers at the factory in Building 293 at the Navy Yard will begin churning out 930 modules — typically 14 feet wide, 35 feet long and 10 feet tall — equipped with floors, walls, electric lines, plumbing, kitchens, toilets, exterior facades and even towel racks.