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)