Prefabrication experiments - 54 - Collapsible prefabricated building (patent US 3731440 A)

Manufacturing buildings or large sub-assemblies in a plant reduces waste, optimises building performance, and makes construction «leaner» and «greener». Factory production generally increases value. Building system coordination in a controlled climate simplifies quality control.

Transportation methodology by air, sea or land of factory-produced components to building sites must be built-in to the manufacturer’s overall production plan. Designing for transport adds value. The steel chassis of the traditional mobile home represents the combined value of a trailer, a floor, and a partial foundation.

As in the mobile home, designing for packing and transport has influenced industrialized building systems. Palace Corporation’s suitcase house, Buckminster Fuller’s autonomous package or even the Liberty’s telescopic trailer house utilized hinged, articulated or hydraulic mobility toward an on-site construction strategy. These systems exemplify efficiently transporting and erecting factory made buildings.

Combining factory production, with an efficient transport strategy and minimal on site manipulation has always been the prefabricator’s objective. From the single-wide volume to prefabricated concrete building panels, transport criteria defines the industry and a system’s viability in different contexts. Transporting components to the arctic might require summer maritime shipping, while trucking across a dense urban fabric might limit the width and height of assemblies. The construction industry’s emblematic 4’x8’ module was defined by railroad transport.

A marginally applied strategy is the collapsing of a module into a flat pack. Multiple units can then be piled onto a tractor-trailer and shipped. The Collapsible prefabricated building (patent US 3731440 A) looked to combine Off-site manufacturing with on site ease by articulating wall panels to fold into a base «l» shaped panel to form a flat package or be deployed as a building module. This invention allowed for quick erection by simply unfolding the package. The invention is of particular interest because of the inventor’s analysis of his contemporary building industry. His description validated that the substantial savings made by the prefab process were offset by the extensive time and effort that were still required on-site. His invention aimed to optimise both transport and assembly. The mechanical mobility of this flat pack used a simple articulated panel system to reduce the industry’s flaw: the absence of an optimized coherent strategy from factory to site.

Collapsible prefabricated building (patent US 3731440 A)

Prefabrication experiments - 53 - Roger D'Astous' Para-Module

The industrialization of building culture underwrote the education of a generation of modernist architects. The post-war construction boom provided the framework for both a lasting mass production paradigm and for a renewed postwar architectural optimism. This context was fertile for geometric based building kits. The search for variability was a method for evolving from the repetitive systems synonymous with pre-war prefabrication. Architecture, structure and geometry intertwined to produce infinitely diverse compositions from simple skeletal frames.

Three-dimensional truss and space frame structures exploiting both tension and compression capabilities exemplified the use of geometry in structural strategies. Prevalent in hangar roof structures and grand exhibit pavilions, large spans showcased this geometric variability while offering flexible and adaptable spaces. Established as a global phenomenon during the industrial revolution and continuing during the 20th century, the world’s fair and its inventive buildings exposed new manufacturing and building techniques.

The exhibition pavilion, from Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace in Hyde Parke to Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome structure in Montreal (expo 67), became a building type synonymous with innovation. Many were an example of the world fair’s capacity to influence building culture, advance architectural technology, inspire creativity among architects, induce an international exchange of architectural knowledge and reveal architectural theory.

Roger D’Astous, a French-Canadian architect infamous for his internship with Frank Lloyd Wright and his Taliesin inspired churches and single-family dwellings was conceivably influenced by the creative structural exploration relating to EXPO67. His post EXPO67 production includes grid-based structural systems for housing that seem to manifest themselves from a newly considered potential.

His PARA-MODULE building system designed during the early 70’s was a juxtaposition of centrally post-supported inverted square-based pyramids. The inverted pyramids captured rainwater and the void between their connections was bridged in transparent plastic to capture sunlight. A grid based roof system, the para-module was proposed for a single family dwelling in the Laurentian mountains north of Montréal. The inverted pyramids were composed on an eight-foot planning grid. Each central post or mast supported the inverted pyramid and pierced vertically through the square grid from which cables supported the four vertices of the pyramid’s base. Somewhere between tensegrity and space frame construction, the resulting translucent roof plane generated an open plan in tune with modernity’s universal, flexible and adaptable space.

From Roger D'Astous architecte, Bergeron C, 2001

Prefabrication experiments - 52 - The Maisons Phénix (Phénix Houses)

The technological convergence that amplified the strength, manufacturing precision and modern symbolic of steel made this material emblematic of innovative building during the 20^th century. The effective refining of steel from carbon rich pig iron offered additional possibilities for larger spans, improved sections and greater compressive and tensile strength. The continuous production of rolled, pressed, extruded and forged steel components altered building strategies and induced a structure versus skin paradigm in architecture and building.

In architectural theory, steel relates to images of the latter Case Study Houses or the glass x-ray architecture of Mies van der Rohe. Mass housing while less architecturally iconic had its representative, if not always successful, attempts to link steel to mass housing. The American Lustron Home proposed enamelled steel panels on a steel frame and the British Dorlonco steel framed house offered an outlet to Britain’s steel industry during the labour and material shortages of the twentieth century.

The period of conflict spanning almost 50 years between the beginning of the first and the end of the second World Wars, generated a creative knowledge transfer from manufacturing tactics to building culture leveraging technology into post-war growth. The massive rebuilds from the United States to the Soviet Union crossing through France, Britain and other European nations were analogous both in their massive investments and in the housing systems that were initiated. The Phénix Houses, (Maison Phénix) established in 1944 and still producing houses, was France’s solution comparable to the American Lustron and the British Dorlonco. The Phénix steel frame structure included roof trusses and a steel post and girder grid based modular construction system. Phénix’s light skeletal steel structure was promoted as stronger, more resistant and more durable than wood and quicker than masonry.

Influenced by the British steel and iron tradition, the Phénix radically distanced itself from France’s traditional craft based construction as it highlighted steel for structure and concrete for floor slabs. Although many steel systems have contributed to an evolution in building culture, its use in single-family homes remains fairly marginal. Steel’s greater production costs implies repetitive design and component based strategies. While its strength and durability are not contested its high-embodied energy has recently made a case for a greater use of wood in construction.

Maison Phénix structural components