The confluence of military rigour applied to construction management, design methodologies and generational investments in housing encouraged inventivity in building systems. Manufacturing advances outpaced onsite construction producing a myriad of components for the rapid erection of diverse building types. This spirit of production for assembly spawned new experiments and their foundational industrious professional practises. Further, materials as well as methods associated with war efforts and their subsequent transfer to civilian use supported an integrated industrial design process applied to architecture, foreshadowing DfMA approaches promoted today.
Metalworker and self-taught industrial designer/architect Jean Prouvé’s work personified this generative triad of crisis, industrialization and the impulse for manufacturing in architecture. Responding to postwar government mandates, Prouvé developed a series of service core houses «for better days». His vision for the serial production of houses steered Prouvé to design and fabricate building kits with dimensionally coordinated metal parts for structural frames infilled with glass and timber panels in a type of multifunctional curtain wall system.
Included in a highly productive career, Prouvé explored the theory of demountable buildings arguing for an open-source architecture that could be mass produced. Articulated to his 1-meter grid, the demountable building kits integrated a mature approach for scalability linked to part interchangeability; with pieces, details, assemblies and repetitive patterns for overall systems harmonized for simple arrangements. From his 4x4-meter military shelter designed first as an armed forces or emergency dwelling and then as a leisure unit for a budding post-war prosperity to examples designed for their disassembly developed for specific functions, the reversible elements could feasibly be used, reused or repurposed for the repair and replacement of parts.
These early discussions around flexibility and adaptability evolved into contemporary strategies for circularity, component standardisation, and optimizations for interoperability. The simplicity of Prouvé’s demountable structures would not be as straightforward in today’s performative and normative building culture, however the underlying ideas are certainly being revived as our contemporary crises call for action to reform how the built environment is produced, managed and repurposed.
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| An example of the Demountable Houses |
