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