(dynamic music) - This is a Lego. No, this is a Lego. But this is like a giant steel
modular construction Lego. Stack them together and in a couple of weeks, boom, you got a building. Then, just like a Lego,
you can take them apart whenever you want and reassemble them. Why do this? Well, think about the mall. All of those shopping oases
that got built in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, all
that concrete and rebar. Well, the internet made a
bunch of malls obsolete. (man laughing) And what do you do with the malls then? Some unideal conversion, or demolition. Now extrapolate that to a world
with millions of structures rendered obsolete every year. Annually, about 2 billion tons of waste is generated by destroying buildings. Enter modular construction. - In the modular world we think the holy grail is a red six Lego. You can build anything out of a red six. So we created what we think is a red six. - This building
has been assembled and disassembled nine
times in seven years. - Nine times? - Nine times. - Let's pause on that. That means they put the building together. People used it. Then they took it apart,
loaded it on trucks, moved it to a different place,
and then assembled it again. Then they did that again eight
more times in seven years. All of this raises the question, do buildings need to be permanent? Do cities need to be inert? This is Hard Reset, a series about rebuilding
our world from scratch. Just north of San Francisco
is a place called Mare Island where they used to make... - Submarines for the US Navy. - We went out to this island to visit the folks at iMod, one of the companies working to make modular construction mainstream. This is Reed. He's a general contractor by trade. So he spent most of his career
making custom buildings. Now he's all in on modular. This frame is his baby. Well, not his actual baby. Reed has human children. - We make one frame, that's it. There's not two or three different versions of our iMod frame. There's only one. You could have frames
that stack side to side, end to end, top to bottom. And from that we can build multiple, multiple different projects. - That's a big deal. 'Cause the modular and prefab movement
has been underwhelming. - Few are
prepared to commit themselves to such a newfangled idea as the prefab. - Historically the emphasis has been on custom structures. - We're not gonna build a round one. We're not gonna build a square one. It's this shape. And you stick with that because you can't be
everything to everybody. - What makes
this frame so special? Well, it's all pretty hidden. (dynamic music) - Our roof system has in-built gutters, which allow obviously the water to shed away from the building. - That's Mike. He used to oversee an assembly line for Rolls Royce airplane engines. That's pretty cool. - Our frames are manufactured
in Mexico or China. Then they come in as a bare frame and we start putting in
the air conditioner system, air conditioning ducting, putting in the wall
system, the window system, and then the HVA system. - All that HVA system sits in one module. The equipment's in there,
the duct work's in there, the return air is in there. That all allows for us to be faster and quicker on the job site when we get out to install our buildings. - And that frame
has connections all over it. So you can transport
them on a truck, or ship. Offload them with a simple
crane at the construction site. Stick a few of 'em
together, add in the walls. Hook in the plumbing and the electrical. Bam, you're done. iMod is focused on building
classrooms right now. 'Cause apparently children
need to learn somewhere that's not a Zoom conference. When we went out to see them put the final touches on this school we never would have guessed
that it was modular prefab. (dynamic music) - Typically it would
take nine to 15 months to manufacture a classroom
out in the field. We're doing that in 12 days. - Yes, you heard that right. An entire classroom in 12
days from these simple frames. But wait a minute, I know
what you're thinking. Didn't a company in China just build a 57 story prefab
skyscraper in like 19 days? They sure did, and that's super cool. But a lot of those
buildings are sitting empty. Then what? What I think is cool about this approach to modular construction
is the ease with which they can disassemble and
move these frames around. - Ok we're just gonna walk. So follow me. Our six new classrooms
are on the left side. - And that flexibility was the idea from the start. You see, a decade ago,
iMod's co-founder Craig spoke with an official from
the Los Angeles school district who said...
- "It's crazy. We have all these classrooms that we built deployed over here. And because of demographic
changes in the last 20 years, we don't need them there anymore. We need them here. But we can't relocate them. Your building is relocatable. That would be a tremendous asset to us." - In 20 years from now, guess what? They don't need classrooms anymore, but they need medical office buildings. These can turn into
medical office buildings just by swapping out components, and not having to go through
a whole construction phase. We don't want our buildings to ever end up in a landfill, ever. We wanna take that system and use it again, and
again, and again, and again. - So what does a city look like when a bunch of its buildings can move? Picture this scenario. A giant company comes in, needs lots of places to put people. Lots of iMod frames come in. An office park emerges. In a few months, a
neighborhood grows around it. But a decade later that
giant company leaves, and the people move to
different parts of the city, or different cities altogether. Those offices and that
neighborhood can scale down without leaving urban
blight and unused space. But what if we think about this modularity on a global level? (dynamic music) - We developed this system
in conjunction with Maersk, the big shipping company. Every one of our frames is
shaped exactly like a container. And that way they can go onto a ship and transport just like
a container on a ship. They can go on a train and transport just like a
container does on a train. Pretty much every country in the world, and every city in the world,
can handle a container. They know how to do it. - What if, as the needs of countries change, entire buildings, even entire cities, could
be dispersed elsewhere? This would be a hard reset for how we think about
the built environment. We would have to shift our mentality around the notion of constant growth. We see cities like Detroit
that went from 2 million people in the '50s, to just under
a million people now, and people think of them as a failure. But why? Cities are inherently dynamic and maybe they should be
able to change in size. Today, those size changes
haven't been a good look because of the hollowed out warehouses and homes that are left behind. But what if we could
shift those structures to other parts of the city,
or other parts of the world? (gentle music) We might lose the character that comes from old structures evolving over time, but not every building
needs to be charming. Some things are more about utility. Some things work better as Legos. Come back next time for another
episode of Hard Reset. Subscribe to Freethink to watch our other original series and documentaries about technology, and people that are changing our world.
