Prefabrication experiments - 21 - «Uninorm» wood panel building system

The forest rich Scandinavian (log houses), European (timber framing) and Asian (timber joinery) countries developed building cultures linked to wood as a primary resource for heating, construction and shelter. The master mason of stone construction is paralleled by the master carpenter who evolved from the tradition of crafting wood for building structure and envelope. The craftsmanship present in wood building progressed from manual labour and heuristic knowledge leveraged into diversified strategies from the primitive assemblies of branches to the complex joinery of Japanese timber framing.

From log stacking to light stud framing, the hewing of a raw trunk into a profiled and dimensionally precise element launched prefabrication or the pre-fashioning of materials for easy assembly. The Medieval Box frame structures of Germany, France and England employed pre-crafted building components transported to the building site to be assembled in a puzzle like manner. Early prefabricated housing experiments such as the portable cottage shipped in pieces to New England from England in the 17^th century is a noteworthy example.

During industrialization, steel and concrete became the materials habitually used to explore prefabrication. Wood, with its deep-rooted traditions, remained a valued building material in countries where the resource was readily available.

The UNINORM building system developed in 1939 is an example of the industrialized crafting of wood for building. The Uninorm system used in Europe and particularly by the Swiss military for varied building types from warehouses to barracks was a variation on traditional box framing. The post and beam frames were infilled with wood panels. A hybrid of massive and filigree construction, the frames and infill produced a load-bearing flat panel easily transported by truck or rail.   Machine-crafted posts, beams, joinery and panels were standardized and modular producing 2,4m by 3,4m vertical wall sub-assemblies. Roof trusses also pre-crafted to be flat-packed were simply screwed to the vertical structural wall panels. The delivered Industrialized building system included all assembly hardware, windows and doors and their integration in the panels. The flat-pack strategy facilitated and optimized transport. Invented by Hoch & Tiefbau AG cie, the system was concurrent to other explorations in prefabricated wood box frame panels such as Christof and Unmack in Germany and Gropius and Wachsmann in the United States.

Image scanned from Documentation sur l'inventaire des constructions militaire edited by the Swiss federal defence department 2009.

Prefabrication experiments - 20 - California modern prefab

The immigration of influential members of the European avant-garde to the United States transported and secured modernist values to American architectural academia in the 20^th century. The combination of European modernism, its attraction to the American building culture of light industrialized components (balloon frame and skeletal steel) and the American pioneer spirit contributed to prefabrication as a recurrent theme in American modern architecture with the single family home as its nucleus. While present throughout the United States, California was a particularly fertile context for the examination of modernism.

Regularly linked to Charles and Ray Eames’ Case study house 8, prefab culture has a deeper-rooted tradition in California. The mid nineteenth century brought over 300 000 forty-niners and varied transportable housing from United States, Latin America, Britain, and Asia, diversifying California’s social make-up and contributing the progressive nature of its building culture.   

This tradition of shared building culture exemplified by the designs of Bernard Maybeck, and the influence of pure modernists like Walter Gropius and Richard Neutra combined to create an American / California modernism. The Case Study House Program published by Arts and Architecture is a prime example of the era’s progressive ideas for housing. The CSHP designs revealed the common themes of horizontal layering of spaces, centrally clustered flexible spatial composition and modular coordination of components.

Gordon Drake who died tragically in his early thirties had a brief but prolific career inspired by California modernism. Drake designed a series of houses based on a four-foot grid module and a panel system not unlike Gropius and Wachsmann's packaged houses system. The 1946 designed experimental house system proposed interchangeable components based on a three dimensional grid. The strategy was concurrent to the Modular Standards Association and the American Standards Association proposals for a 4-inch cube module that was to facilitate building from a point of view of systems and component integration. This grid was an evolution of Alfred Farwell Bemis’ studies during the 1930’s.

Gordan Drake's proposal for his experimental houses was based on modular coordination composed of floor, wall and roof panels, mostly skins attached to a simple open frame structure. The drawings for the house kit foreshadow Charles Eames’ 1949 CSH #8 kit and portray a typical view of the California modern prefab of the era. 

Experimental House in Architecture d'Aujourd'hui july 1948

Prefabrication experiments - 19 - Buckminster Fuller’s integrated bathroom unit

Prefabricated building components are available in closed or open systems. The open systems are typically offered for structural framing and often leave other building components’ integration equally open and sometimes ignored. Closed proprietary systems, modular-building units for example, strive to completely integrate building systems leaving only certain infrastructure connections for on-site construction. The proprietary systems are by definition intellectually hermetic. The history of prefabrication has not been very kind to the more experimental proprietary systems as they have proven either to be one off trials or commercial failures. Proprietary closed systems also have the drawback of little flexibility or adaptability over time given the integrated and patented nature of their designs. However the creative drive associated with certain systems’ inventions or inventors underlines the relationship between prefabrication and modern architecture’s spirit.

Prolific as an inventor, architect, engineer and industrial craftsman, Buckminster R. Fuller is synonymous with the inventive spirit of the American modernist movement. Along with his writings and thoughts on architecture, ecology and industry, Fuller created a vast matrix of strategies for prefabricated building systems and components: from the ordinary DDU (Dymaxion Deployment Unit) of which many were shipped overseas to help in the war effort, to the extraordinary (geodesic domes) and from the exploratory (Undersea Island) to the practical (synergetic building construction). The optimal use of resources characterized his work. His transformation of the ready-made grain silo into a workable housing unit in response to the war effort exemplifies the driving forces behind Fuller’s vision for housing and architecture.

Looking to optimize the industrial potential of his era, Fuller’s experiments in housing often involved technical hybrids from adjacent industries. This was the case of the aluminum and aviation industries for the Wichita house and was certainly the case for his proposal of the prefabricated bathroom pod. He researched and invented an integrated service pod that could be plugged into a larger construction system prefabricated or not. Proposed in rolled sheet steel construction similar to the automobile technologies progressing at the time, the bathroom included all plumbing and electrical connections. The plumbing fixtures were also to be formed with the sheet material. Integrated into his Dymaxion series of experiments, the ergonomic concept examined minimal material use in order to reduce costs. Fuller’s objective was to provide a high-tech low-cost alternative to the relatively new building problem of coordinating services.

Buckminster Fuller patent drawing for the bathroom pod see patent  US 2220482 A

Prefabrication experiments - 18 - D.N. Skillings and D.B. Flints illustrated catalogue of portable buildings 1861

Describing a building or a building method in a catalogue has a long-rooted tradition in architecture. Architectural treatises from as far back as the Roman Empire established guidelines and proven methods for the organization of military camps and stipulated their construction methods. The catalogue of house plans available at any modern day convenience store developed from this tradition of sharing knowledge about the built environment. Today these catalogues are perceived, in the architectural circles at least, as less significant design, repetitive and impersonal.

The catalogue derived from pattern books that were used as tools for informing craft and craftsmanship.  Used by master carpenters in the 17^th century, pattern books illustrated different types of buildings and their detailing. The pattern books provided models and attested to their relevance.  The American builder’s companion (1806) is an example of published and shared building methods in early America.

The industrialization synonymous with American building reinforced by the spread of the balloon frame can be associated with the use of agricultural periodicals illustrating barn building and fostering a certain building culture.   The infamous Sears Roebuck catalogue of houses is an early 20^th century version of the pattern book that promoted the single-family dwelling as an accessible dream. Each house illustrated in the catalogue was accompanied by a textual description, estimation and customizable options. The catalogue completed the evolution of the pattern book as a commercial and industrial tool.

Although the most famous, the Sears catalogue was not the first of its kind nor the most industrialized, as each model’s components were simply pre-cut. The D.N. Skillings and D.B. Flints catalogue of sectional portable buildings, proposed a primitive industrial building system. The catalogue of varied building plans proposed a system of panels, standardized on a set module that could be packed, shipped an assembled with ease. «The construction of these buildings is so simple that two or three men without mechanical knowledge or experience in building can set up one of them in less than three hours and with equal ease the same men can take it down , remove it to another locality, and rebuild it without additional material.» This excerpt from the catalogue demonstrates the value already being placed on prefabrication at the time as a flexible and adaptable approach for providing accessible building types. The catalogue also exemplifies the beginnings of standardization for building and its potential links to carpentry and millwork detailing. 

Pages from the illustrated catalogue