Prefabrication experiments - 187 - Exhbition houses - 08 - Cocoon House - houses as test subjects

One of the representative areas of exploration in the elaboration of the modern dwelling is its generative link to military technology. As many architects had military training or were involved in various war efforts, they imagined repositioning their newly gained knowledge from military to civilian use. Buckminster Fuller’s Wichita house built from military grade aluminum or Charles Eames’ plywood chairs based on the same materials used as leg or arm splints exemplify the type of knowledge transfer that inspired a reforming of domestic architecture and design in general. Architects learned of and applied new methods. 

During the first half of the twentieth century, the architect’s role merged with the industrial designer’s, as housing design became somewhat akin to product design. Architects viewed the house as a complete work from furniture to structure and to its functionality. Paul Rudolf, an illustrious American architect, served in the Navy supervising shipbuilding at the Brooklyn yards from 1943 to 1946. His Cocoon House (1951) showcases knowledge transfer as it makes use of a simple catenary roof structure coated in the same type of Saran (Vinylidene chloride) spray the navy had used to winterize their fleet in a process called cocooning. The sprayed polymer could coat any reinforced fabric making it weatherproof and thermally resistant. Rudolf proposed this roofing material as revolutionary, making any roof simple to build and highly resistant to climatic conditions. 

The small, 760 ft²(71 m²), house’s section and plan are manifestly modern, based on a modular structural grid optimized for a unidirectional catenary curve suspended (22-foot span (6.7m)) from two perimeter beams. Steel straps suspended from the lateral beams support the thin membrane. Flexible insulation boards are attached to the straps as wood panels in a suspended bridge structure. The cocoon spray then rigidified the catenary canopy. The beams are supported by columns, which form a vertical roof, wall and floor truss.  Steel rods running from the roof beams to the prolonged floor beams, braced the catenary in tension. The small showcase dwelling illustrates Rudolf’s more expressive modern, as the rigid catenary is not an optimized structural form for the small dwellings span. Rudolf imagined this experiment as a testing ground for much larger spanning catenaries.  

Cocoon House from Architectural Forum : June 1951