Prefabrication experiments - 156 - Open building - 07 - PAC houses

The open plan is an enduring design strategy inherited from modernism and the reforming of building culture from load bearing massive systems to large spanning thin building elements such as steel beams or concrete slabs supported by a rational grid of posts. The reforming of building methods helped introduce and generate variability and flexibility as ideals for adapting spaces at any time without affecting architecture’s structural integrity. The combining of the free plan with another of modernity’s obsessions, the factory made house, yielded countless component based building systems all geared to planning freedom while benefitting from streamlined mass production efficiencies. Exploration of manufactured components was wide-ranging and included small connectors or pieces and complete sub-assemblies for buildings. The utility core and the previous posts’ Misawa wall units represent how the factory could simplify onsite construction and delineate a system’s adaptability and alterability. 

Using pre-packaged architectural pieces was the basis of Eero Saarinen and Oliver Lundquist’s winning proposal for the design for postwar living housing design competition sponsored by Arts and Architecture in the late 1940s. The entry was entitled the PAC (Pre-Assembled Component) houses. Singlewide boxes manufactured in three different configurations were the anchor elements for the customizable building system - the mobile home sized rectangular units contained service spaces, kitchens, baths, integrated plastic furnishings and bedrooms. Mechanical elements such as plumbing, electrical systems and radiant heating were distributed throughout the proposed resin-bonded plywood stressed-skin hulls. The boxes served as limits for defining totally flexible adjacent architectural space. Each box would be manufactured to order and delivered onsite where other spaces would be connected and interconnected by the box units.

Juxtaposed, aligned, placed freely or simply stacked to achieve any modular design, the outlined configurations included BiPAC, TriPAC and row house arrangements. The PACs organized spaces in a simple mass to void relationship. The basic BiPAC positioned two boxes face to face sandwiching an unrestricted area spanned by hinged roof elements. Specifically modern in its relationship to planning, factory production and technology the PACs belong to the research field linking prefabrication to open building strategies, specifically in matters of infrastructure to infill relationship and through the conception of free adaptable space.

PAC proposal submitted to design for postwar living competition