«Rapid urbanization places remarkable
strain on housing and serviced land. By 2030, about 3 billion people, or about
40 percent of the world’s population, will need proper housing and access to
basic infrastructure and services such as water and sanitation systems. This
translates into the need to complete 96 150 housing units per day with serviced
and documented land from now till 2030.» unhabitat.org
What do these colossal numbers mean
in terms of what we build and how we build it? The building industry is
generally acknowledged as the source of approximately forty percent of CO2
emissions from material extraction to building production. How will this energy
intensive industry comply with the necessity to produce much more but consume
much less?
Last century’s industrialisation and political
conflicts put a similar strain on housing and underwrote its lot of experiments
into producing more while using less. Structural and functional efficiency were
the staples of 20th century building system’s experimentation; From the
Japanese metabolist experiments in mobility to Walter Segal’s experiments in
self-build, these extremes framed architectural visions for improving the world
we live in.
Buckminster Fuller’s work exemplified
building more with less. From the 4D dwelling tower to the Dymaxion mobile
units or dwelling machines and his geodesic structural prototypes, the quest
for architectural and structural efficiency to serve the masses sustained
Fuller’s experiments and his lasting legacy in architecture. His «standard of living package» proposed a
potential industrialized process to reduce our impact on the planet and make a
better house.
His explorations of an «Autonomous
dwelling facility» elucidated by the «skybreak dwellings» studies included a
transportable module of standard dimensions filled with commodities, which unfolded
beneath a self-contained dome. Furniture, equipment, and a grand piano were
part of the «standard of living package» and supported domesticity.
It seems naive today to imagine that
all the requirements fit into one industrialized package as lifestyles differ
as much as cultures, communities and individuals. The dream of an industrialized
house seems in this sense further than ever as the critical needs for housing
are more pronounced in non-industrialized countries: the need for 96 000 units
per day is an epic crisis to which the only solution is optimism. The apex of architectural
creativity has always been crisis and we hope that this century will be as
fertile as the last for architectural prototypes.
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| Buckminster Fuller's standard of living package - a transportable module of commodities |
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