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