Prefabrication experiments - 182 - Exhibition houses - 03 - The Core House

The core-house is a housing concept organised around a basic functional unit planned for adaptability. Constructed as either a central service device, a social hearth or as the starting point of a pliant housing system, the core was used as a strategy for rationalising a dwelling’s basic requirements. In 1929, Gerrit Rietveld, best known for his De Stijl influenced red and blue chair developed a prototype core house surrounding a vertical central hub. As Walter Gropius had discussed before him, the difficulties associated with producing and marketing a completely manufactured house inspired this system for a customizable home; In Rietveld’s core house, the vertical nucleus could be multiplied for individual or clustered dwellings. 

The core is a platform for combining production and individuality and has evolved in the  past decades into a strategy for offering an elementary shelter that quickly serves essential needs. The houses inhabitants can consequently adopt their own housing patterns affixed to the proposed initial construction. Atelier Bow Wow, a Japanese architectural firm established on 1992 by partners Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima, designed a housing concept, in 2013, that envisioned this process for quickly assembled post disaster adaptable shelters.  

The firm’s modular timber structure combines Japanese timber know-how, the no-nails Itakura panel system with a basic one room plan and more traditional elements such as tatami grid and large overhangs to cover exterior spaces. Structured by vertical slotted posts, the panel walls are constructed by simply sliding and stacking horizontal timber boards along the vertical grooves.  Along with facilitating assembly this simple structural system could as easily be disassembled and moved to a different site requiring only minimal earthwork.

Designed for the specific needs of fishermen from the Tohoku coastline, the core-house is a rectangular prism, which provides all the necessary services to address basic needs (sleeping, eating, hygiene). The design’s modular appendages / terraces regulate the manner by which other cores or modular structures are combined and juxtaposed to create larger living spaces responding to a growing family’s evolving needs. Added elements could expand individual units or be used as a basis for a type of expandable village. 

Left: Model of Gerrit Rietveld's core house - Right: Atelier Bow Wow's core house

Prefabrication experiments - 181 - Exhibition houses - 02 - The Kwikset Lock company and the Eames' office

Crossbreeding industrial knowledge with architecture was an underlying theme of modernism. As the post WW2 era set off a baby boom brought on by both economic expansion and a renewed optimism of peace time, the modern house and its definition was the topic of many architectural machinations. Many architects had been employed toward the war effort and the material knowledge they acquired was being deployed toward civilian use. Charles and Ray Eames’ office was notably active in bring modern materials such as plywood and plastics to daily use in furniture or for housing. The Eames’, known in architecture for their work on their Case Study House 8 and partnering with Eero Saarinen on Case Study House 9, were active in all design disciplines from industrial design to graphic design. 

A lesser known work by the Eames’ office was mandated by the Kwikset lock company. The interest in housing and producing prototypes for the modern world was shared by architects and industrialists as both sought to serve and supply the masses. The Kwikset lock company was founded by Adolf Schoepe and Karl Rhinehart in 1946 on the basis of a quickly installed tubular door lock. in 1948 the company set up as factory in Anaheim and became familiar with the Eames’ and their work through common acquaintances. 

The Kwikset house prototype designed in 1951 was never built but was proposed as a self-build affordable timber kit. The Kwikset company intended to market and sell the kit to include their hardware. The simple kit was composed of a vertical post and curved beam timber structure which outlined a flexible and adaptable interior space. The one-inch model that was built to showcase the design included Eames’ furniture and the signature modular curtain wall organisation developed for the CSH 8 and in other homes designed by the Eames office. The focal point was the curved plywood roof that would cover an entirely free and open simply organized living space. The square plan was divided in two.  Clearly defined sleeping quarters included three bedrooms. The living space was divided by modular furniture that could rearranged as needed. The kwikset prototype envisioned a customizable transparent environment sandwiched between a modular floor plane and an arched canopy roof.

1/2 inch model and system axonometric

Prefabrication experiments - 180 - Exhibition houses - 01 - Roger Lee's tract house

Throughout architectural history, exhibit houses have showcased and shaped new visions, optimistically making them accessible to everyone. Modernism, inspired by industrial development, united corporations, architects and entrepreneurs seeking a new domestic architecture, its production and its distribution. After the great wars, new materials, construction methods and products flooded the market offering innovative conveniences and an architecture based not on local vernacular but on what had become architects’ global pursuit, in the west, an international style based on modernist dogma. 

Prefabrication while remaining marginally applied became a tool for representing this new post-war domesticity in the USA coalescing European modernism with North American values promoting the single family dwelling as a tool for personal freedom and emancipation. A tract house developed by architect Roger Lee, well-known for his application of modern principles, for the East Bay Homebuilders Association’s entry at the 1952 California International Home Show displayed this conceptual union through its modern tenants: the modular grid, horizontal continuity between indoor and infinite outdoor space. A trade association, an architect and a builder assembled to form a formidable team to put forward an essay on housing. 

The tract house was a modest timber structure based on a 4-foot grid widely regarded, at the time, as a way of attaining efficient modular coordination based on material and product manufacturing dimensions. The plan was divided clearly into served and service spaces, another link to modernism, and the prototype included a fully equipped kitchen and bathroom with all modern conveniences. Brick walls and concrete floors anchored the house to its generic site while horizontal brickwork composed the fireplace wall as the focal point of a completely open relationship between kitchen and living area. A covered courtyard adjacent to the kitchen delineated by deep roof overhangs protected a children’s play area. 

The house offered a glimpse into what the modern house could look like including its simple straightforward lines, new building materials and technological components. The house would become a streamlined production from design to assembly; a commodity that would benefit from industrialization as other products had. Time has shown us that although popular with a progressives the modern house seemed strangely unfamiliar and marginalized by a relatively conservative marketplace. 

plan and photograph from House and Home - may 1952

Prefabrication experiments - 179 - Geometries - 10 - Pier Luigi Nervi and elucidating structures

Geometry underlies any architectural composition. Since antiquity the compass, straight edges and strings were used to set out building foundations relying on the rigorous organization of lines and curves. Shaping architectural form, proportioning construction elements, and regulating architectural space can all be related to arithmetical constructions. Modernity not only continued using geometry as a designing device but celebrated geometry as a way of reforming architectural language from classic geometries to industrial production based geometries. Modules and standardized spans replaced golden sections or daisy wheel compositions. Geometry became the basis of celebrating structural form for architects and engineers. Pier Luigi Nervi’s designs reveal a fascination for showcasing structural behaviour through geometric shapes. His Palazzo Del Lavoro designed in collaboration with Italian architect Gio Ponti inaugurated in 1961 for the Turin Worker exhibit celebrated 100 years of Italian unity. The flagship building exposed Italian industry and would later be converted into a technical school.  

Spectacularly modular, its 16 square topped mushroom columns are juxtaposed to produce a great exhibition space. Each 25 m tall monumental and tapered reinforced concrete columns are fluted to showcase load transfer from top to bottom. The cruciform columns have a 6 m x 1m wide base section. Each column supports a 40 m square plane head composed of steel radiating beams also tapered from their center to their edges to explain the increasing stresses toward the center mast.  Each element was prefabricated and the structure was completed in just 18 months. The square mushroom columns are juxtaposed to construct a 160 m square canopy. Each mushroom head is separated from its adjacent slab by a 2m skylight reinforcing both the modular geometry and the sensation of being underneath a colossal covering. Mezzanine galleries lace the interior space and reveal geometric ceilings using the same type of isostatic rib slab employed by Nervi at the Gatti wool factory which employed geometric patterns as ribs to minimize bending moments in a two-way slab system. The building’s all glass envelope frames the basic overhead plane supported by equally spaced columns each celebrating the basic geometry of a square layered with radial sectors pointing to the central column. 

Column Elevation

Prefabrication experiments - 178 - Geometries - 09 - Fritz Haller's mini, midi, maxi

The systems approach to building, creating a whole from the rigorous organisation and coordination of disparate components is one of the enduring principles of architectural modernity applied to building construction. To this day buildings are organised and assembled through systemic and dimensional coordination. The four-inch-cube building module proposed by Bemis in the early twentieth century illustrated how this basic geometric unit could establish a geometric harmony throughout a building’s organization and its parts. The unit to whole relationship based on the smallest dimensions regulating the largest components’ dimensions inspired architects to define coordinated languages or syntaxes based on multiples. 

One of the most convincing attempts at defining agile building systems through modularity was proposed by Swiss architect Fritz Haller. Well known for his association with manufacturer USM for a line of modular furniture, Haller applied his modernist education to develop a scalable construction system applicable to three building types in the early 1960s and 1970s. The mini for houses and residential lightweight construction, the midi for intermediate commercial grade construction and a long spanning MAXI version of the component based system for large structures. The three skeletal steel systems employed a similar approach. Prefabricated elements for columns, girders, main beams and panels based on a modular 60cm / 120 cm grid normalized construction details and simplified coordination while permitting multiple and adaptable functional and spatial patterns. Haller also applied this integrated vision to city structures idealizing as Konrad Wachsmann did in the USA a type of lightweight structuralism adapted to any use. 

The mini, midi and maxi systems were based on a similar square grid. Only the systems’ components were scaled in relation to increasing spans. The efficient two-way space frames, constructed from folded plate sections made use of optimal structural sections to create lightweight trusses with open webs. The unrestricted floor plates simplified systemic coordination though the structural members’ open webs. Passing wires, ducts or conduits was as adaptable as the systems planning; Each system could be changed throughout the building’s life-cycle. An example of open planning applied to buildings Haller developed theses scalable systems to address a need for systemic adaptability to give buildings the capacity to evolve.

Fritz Haller from furniture to cities

Prefabrication experiments - 177 - Geometries - 08 - Hexacube and plastics in architecture

Modernity in architecture in pre World War II social and manufacturing reforms evolved into 1960s and 1970s high modernism. Military technology and the ensuing space race inspired visionary architecture. Plastic production garnered particular interest to commodify architecture’s production as it had done for other consumables. Simple to produce shapes and objects became the source of combinable and coordinated architectural components. George Candilis proposed the Hexacube in the early 1970s employing matching and stackable fiberglass reinforced shells to form dwellings. The cube facilitated clustering while hexagons were used to match cube faces together.

Many such projects developed concurrently for different scales and different settings. The DO-bausystem in Germany, the Tetrodon in France, Guy Gérin Lajoie’s modular plastic panels for the Arctic in Canada and the Ventura and Futuro houses by Matti Suuronen in Finland all employed similar systems casting fiberglass reinforced plastic components for producing buildings. Units or panels could simply be snapped or bolted together streamlining construction. The Hexacube’s basic unit was a moulded half cube, which could be employed as the upper or lower part of the cube. Each 5 m³ cube was moulded with half-hexagonal shaped openings, which formed full hexagons when the half cubes were matched. The hexagon opening acted as the hexacube’s reproductive organ; their alignment and subsequent affixing made it possible to achieve multiple arrangements.  The openings could be adapted with a series of facades or functional hexagonal shaped units, varying the Hexacube’s function and appearance. A series of accessories, rectangular prisms half the size of the cube programmed by function, hygiene, storage, kitchen or other services, could be plugged into the basic unit creating an infinite number of patterns and uses. Each half cube could be piled for efficient delivery, eight deep, as one would stack plastic utility chairs. The cube’s edges were tapered and chamfered to facilitate casting and recasting using the same moulds.

Dubigeon Platics produced Candilis and Anja Blomstedt’s hexacube in 1972. Although only a marginal number of units were produced, the system showcased a manner in which knowledge transfer from the plastics industry to architecture made it possible to fabricate objects, architecture, and cities with similar processes.

Hexacube (left); Tetrodon (upper mid); Modular Arctic Houses (upper right);
Do-bausystem (lower-mid); Futuro (lower right)

Prefabrication experiments - 176 - Geometries - 07 - A house of modular furniture

Throughout architectural history distinctive architects have become synonymous with their era. If Walter Gropius or Jean Prouvé were representative of twentieth century prefabrication theory uniting industry and craft through architecture, then Shigeru Ban is certainly their equal when it comes to contemporary innovative construction systems uniting Japanese culture with modernist spatial ideals.

Modular geometry, a focal point of Japanese vernacular is infused in Ban’s designs. The tatami mat, a component of Japanese domesticity proportions room sizes and their juxtaposition.  Along with the tatami mat, japanese artisans, for centuries, have devised replacement parts for post-seismic reconstruction of timber construction with regulated timber spans and sections; a type of artisanal standardisation. 

Reacting to the devastation of the 1995 earthquakes’ 7000 deaths and 60000 injuries, Shigeru Ban designed a series of case study houses exploring materials and methods for simple cost effective and durable reconstruction.  CSH 4 or the Furniture House is the most recognized. The Furniture House design harvests themes from traditional Japanese construction. The proposal is founded on a modular grid and intricately deigned built-in furniture. 

The volume is a square based prism of approximately 11 x 11 x 3.5m. A reinforced concrete base anchors the floor plane to its descending site and conceals a technical space for service distribution. A series of storage / active walls are assembled by 0,45 x 0,9 x 2,4 m plywood chests. Theses storage containers form the bearing elements and the house’s furniture avoiding the injuries associated with falling furniture.  A reinforced concrete slab is supported by the storage walls and is placed directly over the base plane creating a type of furniture sandwich.  The house’s simple geometry is composed on a square grid, which harmoniously includes a 1:2 sub-module displaying a giant tatami inspired composition. The union of tradition and modernity inspires this at once modest and Palladian house dominating its surrounding landscape as a monument to simple construction techniques. 

Recently in 2013 the furniture house inspired a partnership with Japan’s version of Ikea, MUJI, a lifestyle retailer, to imagine a prototype production version of Shigeru Ban’s manifesto.  Filled with MUJI objects this product comes close to the modernist ideal of a complete dwelling environment.

Furniture House (left) prototype production house (right)

Prefabrication experiments - 175 - Geometries - 06 - Fabricating Geometry or materializing matter

Stonework and earthwork are hardly suggestive of innovative building systems as industrialization rendered complicated masonry detailing non-relevant within modernised production methods. New manufactured materials such as steel, reinforced concrete or plastics and their components could be assembled with such ease and reproduced in massive quantities. These modern methods challenged longstanding construction techniques putting them on a hiatus, as intensive and precise craftsmanship did not evolve at the same rate as modern construction methods. 

As digital manufacturing devices integrate day-to-day construction, complex objects could be produced with the same ease as Henry Grey’s wide flange steel beam at the beginning of the twentieth century; a revolution which was equally reforming. Further as digital fabrication devices are implemented, architectural components are integrating very complex geometries and will be made-to-order. Emerging Objects, an architectural firm has been exploring 3d printing, an emerging technology for construction, as a way of giving new life to age-old construction methods. They have developed a masonry unit, which requires no mortar. The 3d printed mixture of sand, sawdust, ground-up tires, salt, pulverized bone bound into a type of concrete piece together so precisely into a giant 3d puzzle. The firm was inspired by ashlar stonework in which each stone is precisely cut and dry bedded to form a robust structural system for walls or columns.

As stated by the architects this type of dry stonework (without mortar) displayed a greater resistance to seismic pressure. The organizational principle is that dry stonework can move and resettle after seismic loads. Informed by the study and analysis of ancient Incan stonework, their Quake Column combines precisely defined and numbered elements to facilitate assembly. Various geometric patterns are possible and could be shared with the click of a mouse. As complex geometry no longer requires the steady hand of the stonemason, each individual unit didactically displays its shape relating to a whole individualized pattern. Each chunk’s Geometry is completely self-locking.

This type of file to component production method nuances the traditional debate between on and offsite construction as a large-scale 3d printer produces project specific components reforming the ideals of normalization and standardization normally associated with architectural production. 

animation from the firm's website at 

http://www.emergingobjects.com/project/quake-column/

Prefabrication experiments - 174 - Geometries - 05 - Inhabitating polyhedra

Using geometry to redefine and reform traditional architectural compositions was one of modernism’s defining attributes. Simple white prisms or ascetic steel skeletons informed by strict modular rationalities came to express architectural modernism in the early twentieth century. From LeCorbusier to Mies van der Rohe, a union of classical geometry with industrial principles underpinned most modernist grids. 

Geometry also informed a later modernism based not on aesthetic ideals but on principles for improving construction and structural efficiency. R. Buckminster Fuller, Frei Otto and Felix Candela employed geometry to optimize structural form for spanning large areas with the least amount of material. Still another vector for geometry in architecture was developing formal archetypes and shapes that are non-traditional and originate simply from experimenting with geometric arrangements. The architecture of Zvi Hecker undeniably falls into this category. 

Developing shapes inspired by a type of crystalline modularity, his work with the firm of Neuman, Hecker and Sharon is especially noteworthy in this regard. Juxtaposing regular polygons into patterns made the geometric assemblies. The firm designed a series of temporary shelters based on geometric patterns. The projects were undertaken in the early 1960s, the first at Ahziv and the second at Michmoret. Both proposals sought to reinvent the modern tent. The systems were to be lightweight and easy to assemble. The basic unit was a site assembled hexagonal panel framed in light timber and filled with reeds wired and pressed together in a linear pattern. The reed mat within a hexagon edge produced panels, which became the faces of varying polyhedra. The edge segments were either joined together or left open for access, light or ventilation. The micro dwellings were large enough for two or three people. The 6-foot diameter panels joined together produced a truncated octahedron. The formal expression of each cabin was completely foreign to traditional housing typologies but the lightweight reed surfaces integrated local vernacular.

This geometric regionalism is synonymous with Hecker’s work. His many experiments with polyhedra endeavoured to make complex geometric forms socially acceptable. However, Hecker’s singular objective was to express an original architecture beyond regular right-angle volumes.

First project at Ahziv