The utility core, active wall, plumbing wall, wet
core, and the service module or pod convey the quest for mass-produced
integrated building systems. As far back as the early twentieth century, the commodification
of infrastructure, services and their components confronted traditional
building methods and motivated architects, industrial designers, producers and
builders to imagine multi-functional sub-assemblies that could rationalize service
spaces and make their production economically feasible. The mobile mechanical
wing proposed by Buckminster Fuller in 1940 was a direct result of this shared
willingness to unite the assembly line, mechanisation and construction toward
the production of machine like hubs for buildings.
The service core signified the dwelling’s engine and still
denotes a potential union of design, construction and factory production. As
demonstrated by many pods of the second half of the twentieth century, the
utility core was associated to capsules in lightweight materials such as
fibreglass. However, concrete boxes were also explored as the nucleus of
potential mass-produced building systems. Skanska, a well-known Swedish
construction innovator proposed a concrete hub in the 1960s. The 9-ton (9000kg)
concrete «heart» was part of the
company’s concrete building system; A flexible configuration of concrete boxes arranged
around a volumetric hub. The «heart» included the bath, the kitchen and a boiler
in a simple shipping container-like shape with dimensions of 2,2m x 4,3m.
Skanska’s factory could produce a «heart» in eight
days. The unit’s production took place on a train track like assembly line with
nine stations, each corresponding to specific tasks and to one day’s work. The
factory setting allowed the company to rely on repetition, a coherent supply
chain and consistent conditions to achieve a quality product. The heart unit
was priced at seven hundred English pounds (about 23 000US dollars in 2017). Six
to eight units per day could be delivered, craned and plugged into place. Improving
the company’s Corpus method, the heart was the engine onto which similar empty
box units were assembled to shape any customizable plan. A test house was built
in Sweden in 1961 and took just thirteen and a half hours to complete.
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| The «heart» utility core |
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