Prefabrication experiments - 133 - settings - 4 - The internationalization of the bungalow - the prefab Quelle-Fertighaus

The decades that followed World War II were exceptionally productive for housing development. Post-war reconstruction, a significant boom in birth rates and pre-war military production directed toward post-war consumerism stimulated growth in industrialized nations. The prefabricated house that was defined in the early 20^th century entered mainstream during the period between 1945 and 1970. Civilian producers were on the rise as western societies ascertained their fascination with the home and its new conveniences. Adapted from pre-war modernity, small house types were burgeoning into veritable tract carpets. This was the case in the USA and Canada. A noteworthy example, the CMHC (Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation) got architects in on the act by mandating catalogues of small houses for the Canadian buyer. The prefab house was marketed in a similar fashion but the connotations of prewar prefab stigmatized the industry.

The site built mid-century bungalow became synonymous with a type of uniform housing production and flourished in North America but also became the icon of modern living in other countries. Germany’s «Quelle-Fertighaus», a small modern mail-ordered prefabricated bungalow represented a type of international nostalgia for American typologies. The large windows, flat roof, horizontal detailing and modern amenities indicated 1960s optimism and early 20^th century German modernism.

The house could be assembled from mass-produced components in five days and was provided with its own service manual an impulse of German manufacturing. The Quelle’s simple plan combined three zones: sleeping quarters, a technical «core» with bath and kitchen spaces, and a third nifty multi-functional space that could be divided in three different permutations of living, dining and den spaces. The zoning diagram presents a sectional potential for spatial customization. The bungalow employed a steel post and girder frame covered with modular insulated and foil wrapped sandwich panels. The 1.8 tonne manufactured «T» shaped service core was delivered and anchored to the home on site.  The one storey flat roof drained inward and complimented this simple box structure’s prismatic lines. The modern «Quelle» bungalow exemplifies a globalized building culture as the bungalow became an international typology recognized as a specific component of post-war consumerism.

The Quelle prefab bungalow circa 1965

Prefabrication experiments - 132 - settings - 3 - From the Bailey Bridge to the modern steel-framed house – military might in architecture

The customary narrative associated with prefabrication in architecture re-counts many histories of simple, easily assembled, intelligible component-based building systems capable of being deployed in multifarious contexts. Modular structures related to open planning such as post and beam skeletal structures or more complex truss structures offered a new potential for total flexibility dissociated from traditional load-bearing mass-based systems. The streamlined use of modular systems was advocated by the generative links between military production and its technological transfer for civilian use. This is evident in projects such as the AIROH house in Great Britain or the Lustron home in America. Housing was an outlet for conserving military capacity during peace times.  Further, architects put to work for the military as designers, draughtsman, architects learned of industrialization’s potential to renew the discipline’s acquiesced building strategies.

Military and industrial imagery percolated architectural semantics. The relationship between architecture and military bridge building is an interesting starting point to compare modern architectural imagery to military know-how. The Bailey bridge in particular showcases a type of kit-of-parts variable building system. Sir Donald Bailey adapted the portable componentized bridge kit in the 1940s from the Callender-Hamilton Bridge System patented in 1937. The simple box panel system consisted of steel triangulated members attached by gusset plates forming rectangular truss components for panels and deck systems. The basic components of the bridge kit were fully standardized, mass produced and fully interchangeable. Each sub-assembly had to be lightweight, portable by military trucks and erected rapidly for military establishment. The main load bearing side trusses 10’ long by 4’9” high could be assembled in a single layer or doubled to achieve greater spans.

The bridges modularity and triangulation certainly relates to certain modern skeletal-based housing structures. Charles Eames’ component based case study house #8 makes a compelling argument and influenced many nascent architects. Craig Ellwood's Frank Polly Pierson house from the early 1960s is a crude example of bridge-truss typology percolating architecture. The house uses a truss as the basis of a box frame system. Certainly not a refined link between architecture and bridge building, it does manifest modern architectures fascination with military production.

Above: Frank Polly Pierson House - Below: Bailey Bridge components

Prefabrication experiments - 131 - settings - 2 - sharing building methods; Camus from USSR to Cuba

In the wake of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro gained power on January 1 1959. The subsequent American embargo on Cuba intensified pressure on the Castro administration to acquire other economic partners. A trade agreement for Cuban sugar in return for Soviet fuel initiated trade relations between the two nations, which would be predominant in Cuba's agenda. The USSR would cooperate with the socialist republic during the Cuban missile crisis. The partnership was instrumental in sharing a specific type of building system as well. In 1963, Hurricane Flora triggered devastation and displaced thousands. The Soviet Union by means of their massive standardized building capacity bequeathed a factory, expertise and a building system, the I-464 large concrete panel system, in order to help the rebuilding process. 

Cuban engineers and designers assumed the panel system's tweaking to local climatic conditions. The I-464 also known in the USSR as the KPD, large panel system, was a variation of the French CAMUS method patented by Raymond Camus in 1948. Retained in the vast «campaign for 4000 dwellings» (loosely translated from French) the scheme employed concrete panes as the basis of simple slab and wall platform construction. Along with the Camus building process, the USSR had inherited this type of building normalization during the 1930s with the Soviet chapter of Ernst May’s urbanization missions.

Although snow loads are substantially different in Cuba, the large panel heavy prefab system followed a similar pattern of development. The concrete panels’ thickness varied between 150mm and 300mm and obeyed a modular grid of 8m x 3m. Variations included insulated sandwich panels or panels cast with different textures according to the panels' function. Cast over steel reinforcement, panels were connected with a cast-on-site joint.

The exchange of building culture from The USSR to Cuba constituted a gracious exchange but also elevated government adversaries who perceived the aid as underwriting soviet financed districts. A decade later in an attempt to broaden the use of this modern building method, Cuba's adaptation of the Camus system was sent to Chile. The large concrete panel as an open variable building method endured and insured the open exchange of a type of socialist building culture.

I-464 large concrete panel building system

Prefabrication experiments - 130 - settings - 1 - Operation Breakthrough - The Townland System

Under the direction of George Romney from 1969 to 1973 the department of Housing and Urban Development in the United States initiated a massive housing program to underwrite the progress of mass marketable and reproducible strategies for all income levels and particularly for low-income families. Along with reducing costs, Operation Breakthrough was to redefine building culture in the United-States and generate for the building industry what mass production had brought to every other economic sector: greater productivity. A phase I request for proposals drew 236 entries from which 22 test sites were chosen for prototype development. Of the 22 prototypes only nine test sites were eventually completed. The nine test sites included Indianapolis, IN; Kalamazoo, MI; King County, WA; Jersey City, NJ; Macon, GA; Memphis, TN; Sacramento, CA; Seattle, WA; and St. Louis, MO.

Further to innovation in building, the program also proposed a fertile ground for cross industrial/political collaboration. The program’s high expectations encouraged partnerships and vertically integrated housing schemes from marketing to land development and mass manufacturing. The cross-pollination was necessary to achieve housing production in the hundreds of thousands in a relatively short period of time. The lofty goals unrealized, the program is considered as another failure in bridging the gap between construction and factory production. Production never transcended the nine test sites, however the program did demonstrate some radical building systems.

The Townland, supported land system, was a notable example of 20th century megastructure principles applied to low cost housing. Initiated by Boeing and suggested by Building Systems Development, part of the ongoing research at Berkley, the 58 units were eventually built by a consortium headed by Keene Corporation. The supported land system stacked concrete slab streetscapes. Each of the stacked streets supported by a regular grid of columns was subdivided into private (infill), semi-private and public pedestrian areas (infrastructure). A lightweight construction system made up of steel channels was assembled on site to allow for potential unit customization and adaptability over time. The massive concrete infrastructure included provisions for exterior courtyards and landscaping on every level.  A novel form of vertical intense urbanism, the 58 units at the Yelsler Atlantic site in Seattle, appear as a small fragment of what the system intended.

Townland rendering and prototype photograph