Prefabrication experiments - 48 - The Marburg Building System

As industrial models of production spread through building culture in the second half of the 19^th century, efficiency became a focal point of architectural technology.  The coherent assembly of components established a new architectural language and underwrote the «systems thinking» prevalent in building design throughout the 20^th century.  Architects organized a coherent whole from the interaction of manufactured elements and established modularity as the basis of building coordination. Underlying building parts were designed to obey overlying systems such as structure, which dictated spatial configurations.

In response to Post war rebuilds and the pressures that the baby boom was applying on housing and infrastructure, the modular approach was used as an organizational tool in spatial planning from interior systems to city planning. Modularity a component of modernism’s universal space served the contemporary needs of mobility, rapid technological change and life-style transformations.

Transient modern lifestyles paralleled by increased mobility and open exchange of knowledge dictated a paradigmatic shift in education. The school construction systems developed in Great Britain, the United States and Canada during the post war years responded to the contemporary needs with open, resilient, modular and interchangeable components.

The dimensional matrix consistent with these school building systems in plan and volume was the conceptual model on which the Marburg building system was based. Originally developed as a thesis project by Helmut Spieker, the simply "dry" assembled and disassembled manufactured components were configured to be expandable, flexible and adaptable.

Studied in Germany in 1966 by architect Karl Steiner to modernise buildings at the University of Marburg, the industrialized building system utilized a set of prefabricated pre-stressed concrete components based on a structural grid of 7.5m and was composed by the juxtaposition of grid based modules. The structural grid was divided and subdivided into a planning module of 60cm, which coordinated each minute detail from window-wall placement to position of interior lighting.

This dimensional coordination inscribed within the system regulated all building components from envelope to mechanical systems and mobile room partitions. As a series of cogs that coordinate movement, the grid organised a variability to suit the needs of an evolving didactic program. The University of Marburg campus exemplified Germany's rigorous, rational and open approach to industrialized building systems after the Second World War.

The Marburg industrialized building system

Prefabrication experiments - 47 - The Raumstadt «space frame city»

The mechanization and componentization of production promoted the repetitive use of dedicated and precise elements for the construction of buildings. Influenced by this continuous production, patterns, geometric grids and their configurations cultivated a premise of modern architecture. The application of industrialized components to achieve greater spans and lighter enclosures for new building types (hangars, exposition halls, airports) pioneered the modular, triangulated and filigree frame as a 20th century structural archetype. The repetitive nature of theses compositions also established the space frame as a model for the interchangeability and coordination of the underlying building systems.

Colossal post-war rebuilds, cold war politics and the space race helped fuel architects’ use of space frame representation to develop futuristic city and housing structures. Advances in techniques, materials and communications globalized the space frame as a comprehensive building system.

The mega-structure as an architectural type, evolved from large space frame structures relating themes of assembly, industrialization and the pressing need for housing. These utopic and scalable architectural expressions shaped architectural theory. As Reyner Banham stated in his book (Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past) the mega-structure was emblematic of architects taking matters of social change in their hands and proposing a bold new world. From Japanese metabolists to Yona Friedman’s spatial cities, the industrialization of building fuelled the amplification of these geometric systems and their relating components.

The Raumstadt loosely translated as «space city» was developed by  Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz in 1959. He envisioned a future building system that integrated scales of infrastructure, cityscape, and housing in a triangulated support structure. Characteristic of systems thinking, modular coordination and values of rigorous and coherent design, the Raumstadt depicted a potential city building system and the geometrically rooted nature of space age architecture. Acting as a support structure, programmatic elements could be plugged-in or removed as the city’s needs evolved.

The skeletal structure capable of supporting dwellings and their inhabitants spoke to the glorified themes of the industrial city, the speed of an ever evolving technical society, and the potential of space travel that promised to transform our cities into veritable organisms of mobility. The Raumstadt is one of countless projects that proposed the megastructure as a flexible, adaptable and scalable system for city planning in the post-war era.

Raumstadt - developed by  Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz in 1959

Prefabrication experiments - 46 - Bertrand Goldberg's Unicel Plywood Freight Cars

The development of railroad transport paralleled the industrial revolution and fuelled the production and distribution of cheaper and standardized goods. The mass consumption and transport rendered seamless by the railroad influenced architecture and building construction as the manufacturing processes for rolling, pressing and forging growing out of the needs of a newly industrialized world componentized production and lead to the progress of skeletal frames.

From steel beams, to open frame structures and manufactured paneling systems, architects and builders profited from the sharing of knowledge between industries. This transfer was further stimulated by the war efforts of the early 20th century. Many factory produced building systems were conceived out of the hybridization of building and manufacturing. The Dymaxion house designed by Buckminster Fuller or the portable barracks of Jean Prouvé are emblematic of this heroic era of architectural explorations on buildings as well as mass-produced objects.

Bertrand Goldberg’s work for the Unicel Freight Cars is characteristic of an architect’s sensibilities being directed to non-traditional mandates. Augmented production of steel for wartime use created a shortage for steel's other uses and had many producers looking for stable alternatives.

The Pressed Steel Car Company mandated Bertrand Goldberg to design a rail car that would be as solid as steel but manufactured by alternative means. Goldberg’s proposal was a railcar structure made from a plywood stressed skin panel. A thick plywood panel produced by bonding multiple thicknesses was proposed as a strong and durable alternative to pressed steel. The massive wood container could be produced, insulated and transported as efficiently as its steel counterpart.

Analog to today’s cross-laminated structural panels, the thick plywood panel optimized perpendicular strands of thinner layers of wood augmenting fibre direction and strength.  These Unicel modules conceived for the Pressed Steel Car Company were never mass-produced, however Glodberg’s work demonstrates modern architecture’s framework of standardized production and it’s potential use toward problems of building and housing.

Unicel railcar from promotional photo from http://archive.bertrandgoldberg.org/