A report published in 1928 by the American consul in
Cologne, estimated Germany’s dwelling shortage at 800 000 units (see the dream of the factory made house). The
housing crisis fuelled many experiments in construction systems for dwellings.
German architects and engineers inspired by the advances in steel and concrete
promoted affordable, flexible, easily assembled, durable and hygienic housing
strategies using these new materials and methods. The Bauhaus and its young
proponents of a new architecture undertook a number of these experiments. Their
research into individual and collective dwelling prototypes was often a
collaborative effort associated with the building industry. The collaboration between
these two fields, architecture and industry, is one of the major constituents
of modern architecture.
Ernst May, architect and urban planner from Germany,
was one of the major players in disseminating collective housing schemes in
Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. One of these schemes built
in the heart of the housing crisis included 1400 units in Praunheim.
Rationalisation, standardisation, modularity and component based building were
the ideas proposed by May. The project included a pre-cast concrete panel
factory set-up by Ernst May in a large empty manufacturing plant. The factory produced
slabs, panels and pre-stressed beams. These sub-assemblies incorporated, as
needed, windows, doors and hardware and were then transported to and assembled
on site. Each standard modular one-story concrete slab could be produced in less
than five minutes. Ernst May’s system was a major facet in the «Reichsforschungsgesellchaft» research
for housing organization in Germany.
The panel based construction system was based on the
repetition of a few clearly defined dwelling plans, the standardisation of
building details and the coordination of different building systems from
kitchens to bathrooms and their mechanical components. The simple system of
horizontal slab panels for floors and vertical slab panels for walls employed
pre-cast concrete as a fire-resistant and soundproof material, two properties
required for the success of collective housing.
Wall and floor panel construction systems were the
most successful and enduring forms of industrialized building. The strategy
minimized overhead required for procurement in as much as the panels were
produced as needed. Marketing overhead was also reduced to a minimum as the
panel was a simple sub-assembly and did not require market education to be
adopted as was the case in many of the prefab experiments in modular housing
which had, and sometimes wrongly still have, the cheap or low-cost temporary
housing connotation.
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| see Herbert G, The Dream of the Factory Made House, MIT Press, 1984 - p50 |
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