Prefabrication experiments - 51- Shed Shelters in the Arctic (the Angirraq)

In recent years, arctic sovereignty has resurfaced as a political, economic and security concern. Increased military presence by Nordic nations induced by climate change and the prospect of a manoeuvrable passage has increased interest in the territory's position and resources. Since the late 19th century the arctic has been coveted by nations seeking to harvest its potential. The Arctic’s native cultures have been on the front lines of southern military, mining and territorial speculations.

For most, the Arctic is either completely unknown or a potential economic goldmine. Canadian author Farley Mowat’s literature compellingly illustrated the tension between climate, culture and southern influence. The issue of housing became central to this tension and was exacerbated as the government took responsibility for the Inuit in Canada at the beginning of the 20^th century.

Global conflicts further pressured development in the North as the American military sought to establish a presence and a «distant early warning line» to protect against potential soviet attacks from the North. During the cold war many military outposts were colonised increasing the friction between southern sedentary culture and the Inuit transient lifestyle.  

Many of the housing experiments or habitable boxes shipped north to improve housing conditions demonstrate the discord between north and south as they ignored cultural needs, lifestyle and most surprisingly climate.

The government subsidized House types that were shipped in modules or kits. All shared southern building techniques and materials and considered ease of assembly and transport as the two primary criteria for design. The Angirraq shelter was a small simple 16 foot by 24 foot «kit of parts» structure of stressed skin modular panels. The stressed skin panels built form standard two by four framing were covered in plywood and packed with Glass fibre insulation. 

The sandwich construction was neither vented nor protected against condensation or air infiltration. The simple volume with a shed roof and large overhangs was proposed to contrast the traditional pitched roofs associated with the prefabricated imported systems. The modular system of panels for walls and roofs optimized transport and repetitive production allowing no on-site changes, customization, and little consideration for the needs of the Inuit hunter/gatherer.

This type of experiment illustrates the type of prefabrication that was synonymous with northern colonization that seemed to disregard the necessary cultural significance of housing strategies.

 from Low Cost Prefabrication in Arctic Houses : http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic19-2-192.pdf

Prefabrication experiments - 50 - «Transportable Units» by Angela Hareiter

Manufactured housing and prefabricated architecture as two distant theoretical relatives evolved from the conceptual distance modernity shaped between architecture and building. The modern architect’s preoccupation with mass housing rested on the meeting of immense housing demand, conflict and evolving manufacturing possibilities. The post-war massive building programs lead to great architectural exploration and massive entrepreneurial undertakings of tract housing. From this confluence, housing and architecture converged and then seemed to follow different paths.

Post war high modernism (Scott) noted as a technical condition that would improve social conditions, was well represented in architecture and developed a discipline articulated on values somewhat distant from problems of building. The disconnection between housing and architecture is still illustrated today as manufactured housing has only marginal links to architecture and architects have only a marginal aesthetic interest in the industrialization of housing. Late modern experiments show this detachment from building but also demonstrate a growing appeal for the industrial, technical and engineering prowess of the space age. 

Industrial production, mobility and flexibility became focal points of how architecture related to building systems. Plastics and specifically glass fibre reinforced plastic was the flagship material of this new architecture. From prefabricated bathroom capsules to aggregated modular matrix structures, architecture explored new housing types. Although innovative and optimistic, it can be argued that this further separated architects from housing.

Choosing an emblematic project that relates high modernism and architecture is a difficult task because of the great diversity and quantity of experimental projects. Patented systems range from suspended mobile units to stacked units and to mobile pods. The «transportable units» by Angela Hareiter addressed all the areas of study linked to high modernism as it relates to architecture in an ambitious dwelling tower: futuristic city systems, clip-on architecture, service cores, flexibility, adaptability, and unit mobility. The central vertical core infrastructure provided an outlet for services onto which each individual industrialized and moulded stressed skin unit could be plugged into and unplugged to suit society’s evolving needs. The collected units braced and completed the tower’s structural core system. Units were to be hoisted by crane or deposited by helicopter and linked to the structural core. The clip-on strategy failed to materialize but these building systems advanced assembly of parts as a 20^th century architectural aesthetic.

Mobile units - Clip-on structural system

Prefabrication experiments - 49 - Casa Jonas 1968 - «Jonah and the whale»

The correlation of crisis to innovation is acknowledged in architecture. From the heroic spatial experiments of early avant-garde modernists to the futuristic spatial cities in the mid 20^th century, crisis has led to rich experimentation. Rapid modernisation and major conflicts were fertile grounds for the material investigation that fuelled creative thinking, new materials, manufacturing techniques, and a strong role for the architect in building a post-war society.

The factory-made disjunction of architecture from its earlier craft based posture established a prospective and speculative role, which encompassed the invention and representation of an improved world.

It is difficult to measure and describe the quantity of experiments brought about by the confluence of war, industrialization, urbanisation and modernity’s ambitious system innovation. Experiments in every material, in every imaginable shape and in every imaginable aggregation contributed to the theoretical framework of prefabricated architecture that still influences the rapport between architecture and industry today. 

Wood, concrete, steel, plastics, textiles, every material and manufacturing strategy form moulding, to pressing, to folding seemed to be harvested to induce simplicity in construction, assembly, disassembly and mobility. Resilience in architecture was related to its capacity to adapt to changing contexts: a system for every crisis. Quick assembly and disassembly often trumped spatial quality or even cultural significance. Manufacturing replaced craft and many experiments addressed dwelling and dwelling organisation as a technical problem.

The inflatable and foldable emergency shelter, Casa Jonas (1968 : reference to Jonah and the whale), by José Miguel de Prada Poole demonstrates a technical response to crisis. The inflated double-folded textile tent structure used air as insulation and as a structural strategy to generate space. A bloated Nissen or Quonset Hut, this experiment used folding and stitching as organizational strategies to achieve a load resistant shape but also as techniques to optimize air pressure within the tents’ structural grid.

The juxtaposition, expansion or assembly with other folded and stitched tent like structures in multiple manners echoed the era’s fascination with aggregation and modular architectural compositions. The inflatable structure composed on a parallel and diagonal grid system was unquestionably influenced with military structures from zeppelins to parachutes or air balloons. The transdisciplinary exchange of knowledge stimulated by conflict initiated many tentative architectural forms and techniques to the problem of rapidly built shelters.

Experimental inflated temporary shelter