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