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