Prefabrication experiments - 38 - Paul Rudolf's mobile home aggregation

In «the prefabricated home» Colin Davies smartly highlighted the longstanding distinctions between the prefabrication of housing and the architectural discipline’s relationship with prefabrication. Although not completely related to the tension between multi-unit and single family housing, this debate certainly contributed to the strained relationship between process and aesthetics that continues to underlie the potential bond between prefabrication and architecture.

From the point of view of the architect, generally, creating variable spaces has conflicted with the sameness provided by industrialized building system. From the point of view of the prefabricator, success rests on the economical value of repetition. Post World-war II capsule architecture was emblematic of the strain between repetition and variability.

The basic unit of measure in this new collective housing utopia was the prefabricated housing pod. The industrialized house became a building block in a diversified vertical organisation that spanned Japanese metabolism and European rationalism. This collective aggregation of units linked the prefabricated home with the problem of social housing. This new modularity synonymous with container, pod or capsule urbanism combined an economical repetitive imperative with the architect’s need for singularity.

Within this culture of the pod, many projects attempted to idealize the vertical aggregation of single-family dwellings. «Putting houses in the sky» was an impulse of many architects’ visions. On a smaller scale, Paul Rudolf's Oriental Masonic Garden prototyped a horizontal development pattern based on the mobile home dimensions as the smallest unit of composition for his variable and dynamic combination of social and private spaces.

Sophisticatedly illustrating the zeitgeist of the post war relationship between architecture and collective housing. The prefab house or the mobile home was stacked in a three dimensional composition of masses and voids. The voids produced varied public and private exterior spaces that most industrialized housing blocks lacked, while the repetitive housing unit was to reduce construction costs. History was not very kind to this type of development and Rudolf’s plan was demolished in the early 80’s. Rudolf’s proposal used a singlewide house module and created a masterful composition of interior and exterior spaces. The project’s failure hypothetically lays in its relation the mobile home park’s negative connotation.

New Haven Masonic Garden development plan