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