Prefabrication experiments - 58 - Triedro : concrete compositions

^{Reinforced concrete and manufactured building systems share an industrial lineage: the straightforward engineering process of pouring concrete over steel lattices encased in reusable forms lent itself well to continuously producing panels, pieces or even sections of buildings. Concrete’s strength and durability combined with a repetitive industrial production model yielded many housing systems. The factory-finished surface for structural floors, walls and ceilings made reinforced concrete an ideal solution for the modern multi-unit building. The components promoted site assembly with minimal waste as many subsystems such as plumbing or electrical wiring could be included in the factory and furthermore in the moulds. This systemic integration was, however, the exception and not the rule.}

^{Concrete’s strength and aesthetic honesty exemplified modern architecture’s values of function versus form and freedom in spatial organisation. Le Corbusier's Dom-ino (1909) interpreted this material honesty accompanied by a need for programmatic variability. Combining the rational and the irrational in architectural compositions defines architecture and industrialization’s conflict; customization in response to individual needs versus the efficiency of factory production. Open building theory was to a certain degree developed in reaction to this ideological conflict.}

^{Triedro is a patented reinforced concrete building system developed in the early 1970’s and presently marketed by Zecca (see zecca.com). Zecca produces industrialized building solutions. Triedro was a building block construction set intended to rationalize production to four or five spatial components to showcase variable combinations and organisations of simple parts. The system included three partially enclosed volumes made up of a floor and ceiling plane and three vertical wall planes organized in three different patterns. These partially enclosed modules were the system’s basic elements for rooms, living spaces or any other served space. Enclosed box unit spaces for services complemented the scheme. These basic volumes informed vertical and horizontal clusters. Stacking was the core architectural strategy and resulted in largely repetitive arrangements.}

^{Established on a modular grid of 2,5m in width, 7,5m in length and 2,95 m in height, the stacked volumetric modules constituted the structural and architectural framework of a variety of space types and uses. The Triedro logistics are analogous to a toy construction set that includes six bricks and one assembly pattern. Still advertised today, Triedro endeavours to fuse efficiency of panel and box construction with architects’ skilful composition.}

Triedro components form zecca.com

Prefabrication Experiments - 57 - Arthur Quarmby's monocoque system

The monocoque and stressed skin structures developed for military use in aluminum, steel, wood and in reinforced plastics certainly revolutionized modern building culture as they permeated post-war building programs. The stressed skin and the monocoque combine structure and envelope to produce an optimal weight to strength ratio. Shells could be purposed toward building, as they were strong, light and potentially relayed wartime industries toward civilian use.

Stressed skin construction relied on advances in industry and in material chemistry. From waterproof adhesives providing exterior grade plywood, to strong glass fibres encased in hardening polymer resins, the chemist had as much to do with building advances as the industrialist during early 20th century. Developments in resins and composite matrices became an integral part of commodity culture as these materials replaced their earlier natural, heavier and more expensive to produce predecessors.

Hardening resins, similar to Bakelite (Leo Hendrik Baekeland - 1907), were developed in building materials from panels to laminates.  The glass-fibre reinforced plastic (GRP) panel was symbolic of new uses for composite shells in architecture. Used notably as the intrados and extrados film over an expanded phenolic core, the monocoque shaped in variable compositions, juxtaposed on simple grids was neither skeletal nor massive and proposed a new formal language. 

Arthur Quarmby, a particular strong proponent of plastics in architecture explored a modular system of GRP monocoques for British Railways’ relay stations and a similar system for Bakelite ltd and for temporary housing.  Quarmby’s approach was based on identical right-angle truncated prism corner units and juxtaposed roof and wall segments. The system was expandable. A base square unit could be deployed to a limitless length in one direction with only two reusable moulds.

The Glass reinforced plastics monocoque somewhat mirrored the development in reinforced concrete as the shell represented the limitless state of these hybrid materials. Quarmby’s simple shell system inspired multiple shell-type cluster organisations. Characteristic of most similar shell strategies in GRP, the capsule like aesthetic lent itself well to industrial and temporary shelters, but never really attracted main stream attention for housing. The Venturo house by Polykem tried to make the aesthetic pleasurable as commodity architecture but it to remains a minor anecdote in the long history of prefab houses.

Proposal for Relay Stations in GRP shell panels

Prefabrication experiments - 56 - Walter Segal «self-build»

Today’s «do it yourself» and «maker» movement applies tangible control over the exclusive nature of our commodity culture.  The progress in personal manufacturing technologies such as laser cutters, die cutters or 3d printers feeds an empowering sentiment toward crafting everyday objects. These new technologies accompanied by «open» collaboration can transform our current manufactured material culture which impedes any systemic user-product interaction. The «global village construction set» is an existing «open source» approach to building almost anything that offers «makers» or «product hackers» a perceived technical and political autonomy.

In architecture, «do it yourself» or «self-build» has and continues to constitute a marginal segment of production. The «self-build» posture evolved from individuals’ visceral need to fashion shelter from branches, bones and stones. This direct relationship between man and milieu still defines architecture’s greatest specificity: context.

The industrialisation of architecture linked to commodity culture in the 20th century erased a portion of architecture’s specificity as production techniques and post war building programs organised repetitive building patterns.  Prefabrication often bears the blame for the resulting impersonal architecture, however only 5 - 10% of our building stock was factory produced. Promoters, land use planners, and builders are the true stakeholders of a cookie cutter building stock; factory produced components lend themselves to beautiful as well as ugly architecture.

The «self-build» segment in architecture has had its proponents from Charles Eames’ use of off the rack components in Case Study House 8 to Ken Isaac’s living structures. Representative of the self-build lineage in architecture, Swiss Architect Walter Segal conceived a method for wood frame buildings and their procurement. Developed during the 1970’s Segal proposed a lucid modular assembly of skeletal and panel components.

Derived form the traditional English box frame, the wood structure akin to the 2x4 balloon frame was organized on a stringent grid devised to reduce material waste and minimize wet building techniques. The basic concrete pad foundations were the only subcontracted elements of the building process. Related to wattle and daub construction, the traditional straw and mud infill was replaced by coordinated building panels. Segal sought to simplify investment, educate would be builders, and optimize adaptability within a simple skeletal open frame. Complemented by a precise bill of materials and detailed assembly guide, Segal established a «self-build» process that inspired a grass roots movement of collaborative building.

Walter Segal - self-build construction methodology

Prefabrication experiments - 55 - Logikit

The mass production paradigm that characterized early 20th century prefabrication induced building systems based on repetition and stringent modular grids. Industrialized building largely connoted a lack of systemic variability. Within this pattern of continuous production, industry and architecture looked at prefabrication and industrialisation from two diverging points of view: Industry from efficiency and architecture from universal variability. The two diverging viewpoints contributed to two accounts of prefabrication. 

The exploration of open systems and universal space by modernist architects challenged the basic mass production model with component systems based on modular coordination rather than complete factory produced volumes. The continuous production of integrated pieces and panels would allow an architecturally designed standardized specificity to deal with architecture’s essential cultural content.

Walter Gropius, a master of modern architecture and a politically charged architect, envisioned industrial production that served quality architecture for the masses. His writings and teachings on mass production and industrial building influenced a generation of modernists. Manufacturing could be leveraged toward individually designed types. His theories prefigured today's open building theories and in this respect foreshadowed John Habraken's infrastructure versus infill conceptual model of collective housing. This open building framework induced a plethora of Concrete skeletal systems.

Although only one prototype was produced, Logikit was somewhat emblematic of these variable industrialized building systems. Designed for a 1973 competition for «construction kits» in France, this concrete post and beam frame system was articulated to user interaction within a rigorous modular frame. 

Infill of the skeletal frame could be industrialized, architecturally designed or conceived from off the rack building products. The dry assembled parts included a cruciform elaborately shaped node element to which posts and beams could be bolted. The simple orthogonal based grid system was designed to be deployed horizontally or vertically for single family or multiple family dwelling. An example of the universal modular coordination present in most of its contemporaneous experiments, the necessary infrastructure and service elements were absent.  The Logikit lacked the potential for wiring, ducts and systems coordination, which were becoming a large part of 20th century building construction and its amenities. The skeletal frame in this respect exemplifies a recurring problem with prefabrication: the lack of a totally integrated building strategy.

The Logikit components