Prefabrication experiments - 32 - The School Construction Systems Development initiative

The coordinated assembly of systems method of building progressed during the first half of the 20th century and was influenced, in part, by the research of the Albert Bemis Foundation. Bemis examined the idea of modular coordination in the early 2Os. The module as the smallest unit of repetitive measure was used in the composition of buildings since Antiquity. The golden section or the Japanese Ken are examples of a module being used as a proportioning system. Bemis proposed modular thinking as an opportunity to rationalize the meeting of disparate elements in construction. This «modular coordination» was a major step in systems thinking in architecture.

Modular coordination as a tool for rationalisation still contributes to the way building construction is organized. The architect’s role as coordinator of disparate systems is a legacy of the systems thinking imbedded in modular coordination. Each building system can be related to an overall harmonious, conceptual and dimensional integration strategy.

The School construction systems development (SCSD) initiative undertaken in California in the late fifties was an ambitious project that proposed the use of modular coordination to rationalize school construction. Supported and funded by the Ford foundation, the Educational Facilities Laboratories, in reaction to the baby boom’s pressure on housing and education, initiated the SCSD. Architect and professor Ezra Ehrenkrantz was the director of this bold undertaking.

The program’s objective was to propose an open and flexible system for the construction of high quality schools. In response to the idea that better education came from better schools and that schools should adapt to changing needs, the open systems approach of the SCSD would allow for adaptability and resilience. Except for the building envelope every component of the schools strategy, including structure, mechanical systems, lighting and interior partitions, was envisioned as a modularly coordinated kit of parts for easy assembly, disassembly and reconfiguration of parts.

Articulated to a building module of 60 inches or 5’ (1.5m) this grid approach to modularity organized spaces of 10’(3m) 20’(6m) and 30’(9m). Each building system imbedded the necessary intelligence to comply with the whole. Many schools were built in California using this systems approach and many other School districts in Canada and The United States articulated their own systems approach to school building. 

Interior perspective of the SCSD systems

Prefabrication experiments - 31 - Sistema verde by Kartell

Contrary to the well-defined modern and industrialized experiments of the early twentieth century, architecture and building in the latter half of the twentieth century can’t be characterized by a coherent or specific influence. Consisting of a resilient modernist base, an impudent figurative movement, a budding deconstructivist revolution, and a rising environmental movement in reaction to the oil crisis, late and post-modern architecture and building was no more than disparate. Within this disarray, architectural theory oscillated between representation and criticism of the functionalism that characterized the modern movement. The criticism of the modern movement proposed a renewed understanding of dwelling as a coming together of individual and social values. The Fordism of repetition was being replaced by a user-based theory. 

The user-centric theories were to bridge the distance that the modern abstract movement had seemingly excavated between architecture and common building. The baby boom and the post war economic recoveries contributed to an evolving understanding of this new nucleus of dwellers. Architectural theory turned to individuality as a strategic dwelling concept for housing. Structural systems and integrated building systems offered the user a wide spectrum of options for the interior personalisation of space and became the focal point of the era’s housing experiments. Forbearers to mass customization and open building systems, these user-based theories proposed architecture as a variable infrastructure.

Many of these building systems proposed an inventive «plug and play» architecture. The  high-tech mega-structures of the era were articulated on this systemic flexibility. This «open» infrastructure architecture was demonstrated in the «sistema verde» industrialized component based system presented at the Milan Triennale in 1973. Researched by the Italian Kartell modular furniture company, the system included a sectional, modular and structural mechanical duct system of air-changing, plumbing, and electrical distribution. The grid-based plan was organized around two main components: a functional wet core for kitchen and bath and the most innovative component, a double-skin green space/vertical garden. This balcony element was promoted as a green interface to the exterior, a flexible space that could be used as a winter garden or as an interior/exterior eating space.

This completely integrated building system illustrated a paradigm shift toward the rational use of standardization within industrialization and open building systems combining personal adaptability and variability in a collective architecture infrastructure.

«Sistema Verde» rendering from add in Lotus Architectural review 1973 no. 3

Prefabrication experiments - 30 - Domino and not DOM-INO

The common thread of early prefabrication experiments was the convergence of war, modernization and mass production. The manufactured house planned on a typical flat lot became the model for prefabricated housing systems. Site specificity and variability were lost to tract housing in service of massive housing crisis. The model of a site-specific house designed within local traditions and construction methods was replaced in many industrialized countries by the proliferation of the balloon frame. This combination of the 2 by 4 and the steel nail contributed to a housing culture of uniformity.

This detachment of architecture from industry and building distanced the architect from residential design and placed mass housing in the hands of builders. Architects, with a few speculative exceptions, developed a somewhat elitist view of the manufactured house, defining it as a soulless architecture of mass production.

It is important however to note that industry was not concerned with aesthetics. Its processes are equally conducive to beautiful and ugly architecture, site-specific or non site-specific buildings and local or global values. The marginal movement toward open building systems, based on fundamentally modernist ideas, came from a realisation that craft and industry were not incompatible. Modulli 225 designed by Kristian Gullichsen and Juhani Pallasmaa is perhaps the most notable system intended to merge craft and industry. Conceptually linked to Finland’s traditional connection to the forest, Modulli 225 promoted wood in a modular post and beam construction system.

Finland’s prefabricated house market had been driven by the housing crisis and the war reparations owed to Russia. An already craft-based wood building culture, Scandinavian countries and Finland in particular generated a number of open building systems conducive to variability, flexibility and adaptability. The modulli 225 evolved in this context and was theoretically related to the variable DOMINO component-based system. Conceivably also related to Le Corbusier’s DOM-INO, Finland’s DOMINO was based on a similar open modular planning grid organized by horizontal planes. The open spaces within the horizontal planes were filled with patterned panels of walls and windows.  The vertical stressed skin insulated panels allowed for multiple indoor/outdoor interactions.

The DOMINO system was based on a modular coordinated grid of panels, precise details and simple spatial organisations. This rational approach to variability allowed for numerous potential configurations presenting prefabrication as an integral part of an architectural process.

From the product catalogue of the DOMINO system

Prefabrication experiments - 29 - The Ranger A-frame

Following World War II, politics, housing strategy, building techniques, and military technologies fused together to stimulate ambitious housing programs. While Europe concentrated on rebuilding, American domestic policies targeted spending on homes, consumer goods and leisure. The building industry boomed and applied principles of mass production to the balloon frame and tract housing. The building industry and its stakeholders used America’s government sponsored love affair with the home, leisure and purchasing capacity to consider other avenues for advancing and marketing its production.

An example of this industry-supported model was a pattern book of country houses promoted by the Douglas Fir Plywood Association (DFPA). The family cottage, lake house or second home was advocated as an affordable way to strengthen family values and escape to the wilderness. Although the catalogue of designs was not really a prefabrication experiment, it illustrated an important paradigm shift in the relationship between industrialisation and architecture. The architect was a marketing tool for promoting the use of a particular material.

All the designs encouraged self-build, a 32 square foot module (4’x8’ sheets) and the use of plywood in envelope, structure, furnishings and interior partitions. Architects were commissioned by the DFPA in a manufacturer’s association driven process. Most designs adapted an American modernist aesthetic to a regional and woodland idyllic setting.

The Ranger A-Frame designed by Nagel and Associates (design no. 15) demonstrated the regionalist adaptation of modernist axioms (kit building, material truth, structural expression, modular coordination). The simple A-frame was composed of 2”x12” beams anchored to a concrete pier foundation. The interior and exterior plywood panels dictated the spans and overall dimensions. The timber A-frame was nothing new. Its simple triangle arch structure is an age-old building system. The A-frame uses triangulation as its fundamental strategy, which makes it strong and easily assembled. A variation of the simple triangle arch, the Ranger A-frame used a horizontal tension tie beam as a floor structure and for lateral bracing. The exterior A-frames supported a textile sunshade for exterior living, another modernist feature. 

The Ranger A-Frame, and the DFPA pattern book exemplify the leisure zeitgeist that accompanied post-war living. If modernism illustrated architect driven experimentation, the latter half of the twentieth century exposed this type of consumer-minded exploration. 

Rendering from the Douglas Fir Plywood Association catalogue of designs

Prefabrication experiments - 28 - Space Age living tubes

Architecture is closely related to the collective circumstances that organize its production and shape its ideas. The relationship between medieval Christianity and the grand mason guilds illustrates architecture’s reflection of its era and stakeholders. The military production associated with the beginning of the twentieth century introduced architects to new processes. The Eames' plywood leg splints typify the knowledge transfer from industry and war to design and building. In a larger context, even the most ordinary houses produced post-war contained some form of technology previously developed for military use. RCA for example, noted for television produced communication devices for the military.

Early modernist architects explored new technology to serve the masses but also in service of an aesthetic ideal. The representation of architecture as a product of industrialization, the commodification of architecture and the rise of the relationship between architecture and industrial design evolved within this framework.

The latter half of the twentieth century’s fascination with technology and space travel influenced architectural theory. The capsule/pod as a minimal dwelling unit analogous to a spacecraft summarized design imagination and inspired numerous versions of the living pod and its aggregation. Kisho Kurokawa’s capsule hotel was the flagship project of the era. The minimal dimensions, precise configuration and systemically integrated pods gave architecture a futuristic quality that combined technology and the representation future building.

Guy Dessauges’ cylindrical dwellings are another example of the combination of modernist abstraction and the capsule aesthetic. The tubes borrow their shape and structural system from stressed skin construction associated with the aircraft industry. The cylinders’ envelope made use of a polyurethane core sandwiched between two glass reinforced polyester sheets: a light and well insulated monocoque. The tubes or cylinders were based on two different radii: six and eight meters. The eight-meter version was a two floor and two bedroom configuration. The cylinder’s shell shape was suggested for its compressive strength and inherent stiffness.

The self-contained units were stacked in multiple configurations and offered a glimpse of potential futurist building systems. Although their aggregation was symbolic their internal organisation was traditional and exemplified the designer’s use of traditional architectural elements like light, views and interior/exterior relations : The balcony positioned in the diagonally sliced portion of the tubes was the defining architectural element.

Dwelling Cylinders - extracted from www.worldarchitecture.org