Prefabrication experiments - 102 - Techbuilt open steel frame

The steel frame structure ordered by a rigorous modular grid typifies the efficiency of modern architecture and construction. The steel skeleton identified transparency, the open plan, simple assemblies and repetitive industrialized components as tenets of a new architecture adaptable to various functions, lifestyles and programs. The lightweight framework also contributed to construction’s 20^th century systems theory. Architects and industrialists explored the three dimensional planning grid and its scalability to argue for component based building systems and their overall dimensional coordination. The latter case study houses in California, the work of Jean Prouvé in France, the steel based Dorlonco houses in Great Britain, and George Keck’s house of the future is a small sampling of projects, which idealized and rationalized the steel frame in matters of design, production, assembly, organization and quality control.

Developed by architects Sernebald and Skarin, the Swedish Techbuilt steel frame construction system continued the modern tradition of the grid-based steel skeleton as a substructure for all building systems. The system’s core components were the mass-produced cold-formed 2mm sheet steel posts, joists and connectors. Foundation and services were completed on site. The structural system was bolted to cast-in-place anchors. The system’s intelligibility was geared toward non-skilled labour but with the potential to achieve high quality results. Comprised of a modular grid of posts and beams, the kit of industrialized parts leveraged dimensional repetition toward a variable architectural language. The open web floor joists were bolted to a central connector, which coupled four branching joists. This unique post to multiple beam connection was at once elegant, simple and comprehensible revealing an ideology designed for adaptability, reproduction and personalization.  Simple assembly and disassembly allowed users to add or remove structural bays in order to customize the flexible spatial organisation according to their varying needs.

The modular system included corresponding wall systems connected onto the Meccano style grid elements. The simple structural grid and simple fixing devices regulated the integration of all interior systems and components from doors, to windows, to cabinets and to various built-ins. A modern example of open building systems, Techbuilt portrayed steel’s precision and production quality in matters of flexible design and efficient construction. 

Techbuilt assembly and detail

Prefabrication experiments - 101 - Ferro House utility core

In architecture and construction,  industrialization was accompanied by an understanding that product, process and practice standardization was necessary in order to truly benefit from the potential quality and quantity afforded by modern manufacturing. Today’s construction industry still benefits from the developed classifications and dimensional normalisation which  catalogued, and pre-defined commercially accessible components for building. However, the challenges associated with this standardisation in matters of project documentation and system coordination specifically on-site system entanglement remain somewhat unresolved. Although systematized, professionals and builders stereotypically repeat similar inefficient processes on every project.

Throughout the 20th century, industrialists and architects sought to address these challenges through the use of building sub-assemblies combining off-site production and coordination of multiple components leveraged toward value-added design and fabrication. Highlighting these strategies is  the use of a plumbing wall, a utility wall, a service core or a preassembled kitchen and bath cluster as complex spatial nucleus providing technical spaces in a completely integrated built-in unit.

Countless volumetric core or pod-based modules were designed to standardize serving spaces. The experimental «Ferro research house» built in the early 1960's, a Carl Koch (Techbuilt) and the Ferro cement company collaboration, proposed a preassembled wet core linked to a plumbing wall. The «L-shaped» factory assembled bath included a tub, sink, storage and counter space. Conceived, coordinated and fabricated off-site by potential qualified manufacturers, the preassembled module could be produced concurrently  to site work collapsing traditional building schedules and providing greater worker flexibility and safety. The standardized two-inch plumbing wall, fixtures and built-ins streamlined the unit's design documents and reduced on-site coordination. As Carl Koch observed, «the objective of this approach is "units" instead of "pieces"». The units simplified spatial dimensioning and adaptability as the core liberated the surrounding spaces.

The utility core as an instrument relating flexible design with production efficiency has endured in architectural discourse and in industrial production. Many manufacturers produce these spatial clusters and the utility core is the subject of numerous patents. The information modelling capabilities associated with today's production could  further enhance the systemic integration promised by the Ferro experiment by imbedding a systemic intelligence enabling repair, replacement and general life span adaptability which has often been cited as the service core's shortcoming.

Ferro pre-assembled wet wall and bathroom components