Prefabrication experiments - 45 - Liberty Ready-Cut Houses

As their colonies in America developed, France and England looked to these resource rich settlements as pacific and undemanding alternatives to importing wood from northern Europe. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries intensified the harvesting of old growth forests and the operation of lumber mills as territorial development moved west. Advances in railroad transport and the industrialisation of saw mills added to the efficiency with which the industry progressed. The manufactured precise pieces of lumber standardized export ready components for building.  The American balloon frame generated form this industrialization of the forest industry renewed the «do it yourself» building culture in America.

The industrialization of lumber milling strengthened the prefabricated building culture throughout the industrialized world. From the American Sears Roebuck house to the German Christof and Unmack system, the wooden kit of parts produced in a mill became representative of the manufactured house industry. Big name companies like Alladin, Liberty and the German Huf Haus produced pre-cut intelligible kits of house elements optimally packaged and delivered wherever the client wanted. Later, to increase efficiency, prefab housing producers turned to factory produced modular boxes and the kit of pre-cut parts became a peripheral strategy for prefabrication.

The Liberty Ready-Cut House typified the industrially produced component based kit and was part of the approximately 500 000 units produced in the United States during the pre and post war housing crisis. The Liberty «kit» included all the required lumber for structure, siding, mouldings and finishes. The bundled parts included nails, screws, windows, doors, siding and easy to follow instructions for the assembly of a quality home. The Liberty catalogue of multiple designs «architecturally designed for simple living» were all based on a simple 2 by 4 frame structure for walls and short spans of 2 by floor joists and roof rafters. The simple to build 2 by 4 frame and the steel nail were the core components of an infinite architectural variability. Windows were also made to standard sizes and to fit multiple plans. Doors, siding and built-in furniture were similarly adapted to fit all the designs. The pattern book of house types demonstrated the company’s view of personalization and included an order form for a complete house kit delivered and identified to optimize on-site assembly with or without a hired builder.

Packaged house from Aladdin Ready-Cut Homes (similar company to Liberty)

Prefabrication experiments - 44 - George Nelson Company «aluminum industrialized house»

The mass production of precise and quality controlled bits and pieces transformed construction. Nails, bolts and rivets replaced stone and mortar and handcrafted joinery in wood construction. The steel nail for the wooden balloon frame or the bolt and rivet for the steel post and beam skeletal structure epitomized this revolution. The paradigm shift from artisans to mass production also introduced a new architectural language founded on manufacturing output. From Walter Gropius to Buckminster Fuller and from ready-cut houses to modules or capsules, architecture as well as the manufactured housing industry promoted the kit of prefabricated parts as a valid approach for the development of housing.

Employing industrial components to achieve intelligible and reversible building systems responded to the prospective evolution of lifestyles becoming increasingly mobile. The simple assembly and disassembly of building systems allowed for movement and rendered the task of anchoring oneself to a particular place, uncomplicated. The continuous production of interchangeable components streamlined this necessary flexibility and adaptability.

Along with the commonly used steel and wood, advances in other materials such as plastics and aluminum contributed to the development of lightweight kits for assembling buildings and dwellings.

The George Nelson design company of New York designed a variable, flexible and adaptable open aluminum skeletal system of «hollow rectangular prisms». Developed in the early 1960’s and based on a 12-foot modular grid, the aluminum frame and aluminum supports that replaced «costly concrete foundations» demonstrated the era’s zeitgeist in terms of off the shelf kits, moveable building units and capsule architecture.  Lightweight (3 times lighter than steel), corrosion and mildew resistant, aluminum was a no-maintenance alternative to traditional construction materials. The 12-foot square open volumes could be tailored and combined to suit any spatial configuration. A multi-material panel skin system enclosed the volumes. The translucent or coloured panel roof flooded the interior with indirect light or generated a Chinese lantern cluster of dwelling spaces.  The varied coupling of these 12-foot modules with 4-foot corridor capsules expressed a functional and rational approach to planning.

Foreshadowing open industrialized kit systems such as Kieran and Timberlake’s 2006 Loblolly house, the George Nelson aluminum open modules evoked themes of adaptability and reversibility valued for today’s demand for sustainable and resilient building systems. 

The «hollow aluminum prisms» from Science and Mechanics - August 1960

Prefabrication experiments - 43 - Pascal Häusermann’s construction system of circular components

A prosperous and optimistic «glorious thirty years (1945-1975)» (Jean Fourastié) followed the Second World War. The baby boom, the space race and massive infrastructure rebuilds were the three pillars of this wealth and confidence that fuelled development as the boomers’ life cycle evolved. This cohort overstrained all of societies required amenities: housing, schools, roads, etc.

The massive demand forced the industrialization of infrastructure and transformed the building industry and its culture making it dependent on disparate continuously produced components. The architect was no longer a master builder. He became interested in design or management and less with building, thus creating the void between design and building craft that exists to this day.

The optimism and limitless development that reigned within society drove architectural theory to mass housing experiments that were to alter the fabric of our cities when the building industry would eventually catch up. Archigram’s utopias are characteristic of the architectural enthusiasm that occupied design thinking. The autonomous dwelling pod and its clip-on to megastructure potential illustrated the era’s technological advances as well as its obsession with commodity. The recognizable individual unit within the collective structure was the perfect representation of the individual within the society.

The extent of this type of experiment was global and sought to industrialize and modularize an overall dwelling strategy from its urban form to its interior functions. Pascal Häusermann’s Novery system of components was a particularly complex system of interchangeable compressed plastic parts assembled in a variety of ways to produce a single unit and combine them within a vertical superstructure. The curved plastic envelope panels varied from opaque to transparent in certain cases were moulded to include services, kitchen or bath components.

The simple radial plan was arranged on a centrifugal grid of 16 circular segments. When coupled with an inverted circular segment a potential infinite pattern of adjustable centres and circles could materialise. Each unit and its access stair were attached to the vertical posts of a support infrastructure. This stacking effect allowed for multiple configurations.  This «set of parts» method of building portrayed how a specific set of consistent rules applied to industrialized components can be utilized to create a varied and variable construction system. The representation of the unit as a cell also illustrated the era’s fascination with the set-contained living unit.

Perspective view of megastructure and dwelling pods

Prefabrication experiments -42- Jean Prouvé's Sahara Prototype

Early modernists recognized that providing quality housing required a balanced union of architecture, industry and politics. Intersecting industrial production with government supported innovative design organised a heroic, however sometimes fragile and contradictory relationship between the singularity of architecture and mass-production. Architects pursued the problem of housing through design. Government defined housing as an economic issue while the mass production industry sought to offer generic dwellings. Prefabrication was an attempt to bridge the three fields but remained marginal in terms of actual units produced in a factory.

Subsidized post-war housing programs encouraged industrial experiments in housing. Largely economic strategies, these agendas invoked a new type of technological architecture. Mass production percolated architectural theory and became emblematic of twentieth century prefabrication. The off-the-rack component articulated approach supported mass production as well as a new mobility in architecture. The turbulent pre-war and post war period had forced transient demographic patterns questioning architecture’s traditional link to place.

Jean Prouvé’s designs for the French government’s post-war housing programs exemplified the values of portability and mobility necessary to the post-war housing crisis. Prouvé was a self-taught architect/designer/engineer/craftsman and metalworker who applied his knowledge of new materials and production techniques toward a light semi-permanent architecture. His prototypes for the Meudon houses, the tropical houses and the 6mx6m demountable houses all proposed a kit of easily assembled and disassembled parts to provide for flexibility and adaptability.

Part of a late 50’s French government export policy, the Sahara House proposal typifies Prouvé’s ideas for the small post-war house. A simple roof structure organized around a central frame mast provided the fundamental sheltering element. The roof was designed as an oversized parasol underneath which any number of configurations could take shape. A simple design referencing traditional values of dwelling and echoing Gottfried Semper’s analysis of the Caribbean Hut, Prouvé envisioned the prototype as a light metallic frame structure that could be delivered on site and assembled by a couple of men in a few hours. The large metallic roof was completely separated from the envelope components and interior components demonstrating Prouvé’s systemic approach to prefabrication. Prouvé’s assembly aesthetic foreshadowed the high tech work of Richard Rogers, Norman Foster or Renzo Piano, which celebrated technical assembly and its representation in architecture.

Jean Prouvé's design for The Maison Sahara