For better or for worse, prefabrication often evokes the preconceptions associated with the mobile home. Objectively, the negative press, suspect construction methods and low quality materials have long been forgotten. Today’s manufactured dwellings have nothing to do with pre and post-war prefabs. The obsession with mobility, the possibility of towing one’s home and using industrialized materials and processes to offer accessible dwellings endure as the objectives of the mobile home. The Sterckeman family, based in France in the small town of Seclin near the Belgium border started producing mobile homes or «caravanes», in accordance with the optimistic leisure-based dreams post WW2. As was the case with other mobile home companies, the Sterckemans also attempted to produce inexpensive fixed housing prototypes.
A long-lasting partnership with well-known French architect Paul Chemetov, who had designed commercial and industrial buildings for the family, led to the company's experiment related to one of modern architecture's central themes: A house for everyone. Charles and Ray Eames, Jean Prouvé, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Cedrick Price, and the list could go on have all taken a stab at the problem of affordable, manufactured, and well-designed single-family dwellings. The Chemetov-Sterckeman relationship spawned a house made from mass-produced components. Developed on modernist canons, the house floats on pilotis (slender posts) but is grounded by a vertical service core that leads to and serves first story living spaces. A core-house in its most canonical expression, the centralized outward radiating grid-based geometry arranges the plan, its structure and supports external appendages suspended from the steel skeleton. The house showcases its elements as a part of an industrial kit; bay windows are made from repurposed skylights and tubular railings expose the design's link to off-the-shelf zeitgeist and narrative that architects love to argue for to reduce costs.
The architectural prototype is a protected heritage landmark and was extended during its service life. The Sterckeman dwelling was part of an exhibit on Chemetov's work at the Cité de l'architecture & du patrimoine in 2012, showcasing the continued interest in the modernist dream of combining manufacturability with architectural impetuses.
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| Sterckeman - Chemetov house and excerpt from caravan catalogue |
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