Inspired by principles ingrained in a mass production business model fostered by Henry Ford in the early 20th century, motorized vehicle production was centralized around single corporations. Automobile producers set their sights on domestic internal markets before endeavoring to expand internationally and long before partnering with the competition to share knowledge and platforms became the norm. Ford, FIAT, Mercedez-Benz, Skoda, and Peugeot all began producing cars nationally and inspired a revolution in the marketing of consumer goods.
Car production was equally fundamental in pushing toward revolutionary changes in building construction and in architectural design. Seriality, flow production, piece or modular standardization, and mass-produced components all became underlying principles of modern architecture. Citroën in France began producing automobiles in 1919 in the same era that Le Corbusier was quickly becoming an iconic figure arguing for new mechanization methods to facilitate the serial fabrication of quality housing.
His prototype for the Citrohan house employed his Five Points of a New Architecture as the basis of democratizing innovatively designed and produced dwellings. These three-floor prismatic units included a double-height living space that would become synonymous with some of the architect's famous proposals and was inspired by the architect’s fascination with painters' studios.
The whitewashed exteriors covered a traditional masonry unit construction system supported by the flat slab DOMINOpresented as an open construction platform. Based on François Hennebique's patents, reinforced concrete made it possible to build fireproof structures with open plans and non-bearing façades by replacing them with slender columns and thin slabs spanning 5-6 meters.
Initiating a flexible approach to architectural planning, DOMINO could be infilled with any layout in plan and with large expanses of glass in elevation, replacing common openings. Le Corbusier's vision of brand equity with Citroën sustained and propelled the theoretical relationship between car manufacturing and building production. While this comparison is still evoked to showcase prefab’s potential, Citrohan succeeded in integrating architectural folklore but only marginally succeeded in mass producing architecture.
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| Citrohan House representation (1920) |
