Prefabrication experiments - 213 - oddities - 04 - Precast concrete cladding panels by Gino Valle

Although its invention is often associated with French, German or even Swiss 19th and 20th century protagonists, reinforced concrete is in a way a very ancient Italian material. Opus Caementum, a Roman masonry work was infilled with a mixture of volcanic lime-based ash that reacted mystically with water to generate heat and a solid artificial stone. Part of Vitruvius’ treatise on materials, the white magical powder was a major component of the Roman empire’s building culture. The Pantheon still stands in the center of Rome as a symbol of concrete’s capacity for durable compressive structures. 

Reinforced concrete armed with steel or iron again became a symbol of Italian construction prowess during the twentieth century and post WW2 specifically as precast concrete gained traction and was democratized through repetitive components used to build everything from schools, to stadiums and post offices. Precast concrete was regarded as quick and efficient and furthermore uses local resources.

Gino Valle, well-known designer of the Cifra 3, a split-flap clock designed for the Solari company, combined his talent for architecture and industrial design with Italy’s rich concrete heritage to explore precast concrete wall systems. The systems’ straightforward vertical segments present a potential for straight lines, curved lines and turning corners; a modular building cladding and skin for any building shape. The prize-winning interlocking panels for Zanussi-Rex repeated an alternated rib panel cast in three widths, a 32-inch version, a 22-inch version and a corner version. The pattern produces a robust rhythm of cast shadows, maintaining a classic aesthetic even for the most modest of building functions. 

Each panel is profiled with an arched section and a flat striated section which when alternated convey a corrugated facade. Spanning the building’s height, each fluted panel was bolted through its overlapping alternate to reach the separate steel skeletal structure. Bolt openings were cast in the panels facilitating onsite coordination and assembly. From the many systems that were developed in parallel, Gino Valle’s precast panel system invented for the Zanussi-Rex factory building in the late 1960s was applied to a series of factory type buildings. The simple alternate cladding panel communicates repetitive formwork as a parameter of precast concrete systems. 

Panel modules and wall organization

Prefabrication experiments - 212 - oddities - 03 - The Jicwood Temporary Bungalow

Building construction culture evolves through shared processes and knowledge about materials and methods. From ancient pit houses to industrialized A-frames and balloon frames, climate, culture, resourceful tradesmen, and stakeholders interact within a heuristic framework that defines construction history. Industrialization added to this heuristic progression with factory production, its tools, methods, breakthroughs and ideals. The necessary cross pollination between traditional and new trades, architects, engineers and industrialists shaped modernity and some of the most interesting even sometimes awkward building systems conceived as a type of exquisite corpse bridging ideas from tradition, industry, government and often times war. 

The Jicwood temporary bungalow embodies the fostering of wartime, industrial and political policies toward making dwellings. One of the countless number of examples established in the wake of World War II as part of Great Britain’s Temporary Accommodation Act of 1944, the small provisional dwelling was designed by Richard Sheppard founder of Sheppard Robson architects and produced by the Airscrew Company. A supplier of wood propellers to aircraft manufacturers, Jicwood converted its manufacturing capacity to laminated stressed-skin panels. Bonded by a synthetic resin, expanded polymer or compressed sawdust core, the laminated sandwiched sheets could be formed and pressed into a diversity of shapes and lengths. 

The Jicwood bungalow used the modular 1 5/8 inch (38 mm) thick panels as floor, wall and roof with hardwood core inserts positioned for nailed or screwed connections. The 22 foot (6.6m) by 26 foot (7.6m) structure was easily assembled on a temporary raft foundation and could be moved as required. The curved panel detailing at corners, the protruding window details and the simple two-zoned plan reveals the bungalow’s modernist roots. Estimated at 1 pound / square foot (40$/ square foot in today’s value) the inexpensively built houses would certainly invade the market. Instead, production rationalisation led the company to produce panels and boards for a variety of uses. Weyroc a sub-product of the Jicwood Company promoted the stressed skin boards as interior or exterior sheathing in construction projects. The Jicwood bungalow is an oddity in prefabrication history both in matters of building materials but more specifically in its detailing. The cantilevered bay window defies construction logic and perhaps showcases the struggles and constraints that come with bridging the gap between architecture and its factory production.  

plan and construction details for the Jicwood bungalow

Prefabrication experiments - 211 - oddities - 02 - Skyrise Terrace

Dense, mobile, adaptable, affordable and efficiently produced dwellings are the foundation of a sustainable future as earth’s population expands and urbanizes at a exponential rate estimated to reach 8 billion people in 2020;  55% percent presently live in cities and this figure will grow to 70% by 2050.  Stacking and building vertically to reduce strain on infrastructure and land development has been one of the most promoted strategies for converging architecture and urbanism with industrialization.  Japanese metabolist visions epitomized the idea of an adaptable and changing city based on mass-produced capsules, Kisho Kurokawa’s Nagakin tower being the flagship project. 20th century experiments also include equally radical, visually eccentric, marginal or far-fetched proposals for vertical living. 

A pioneer of mobile home production, Elmer Frey envisioned his factory built mobile homes as ready-made components, stationed in vertical reinforced concrete structures. Founder of Rollohome, a successful mobile home manufacturer which generated tens of thousands of homes in the early 1950s, Frey introduced his multi-unit concept as The Sky Rise Terrace. An urban system organized by two 110-meter towers packed with 504 variable ten-wides (3m wide mobile home). The vertically sprawling trailer park included parking spaces for each unit. The ground floors would house shops and restaurants. Owners could drive up to their units along peripheral circulation. Tested on a smaller three- storey version built in Saint-Paul Minnesota in 1972, the concept was plagued by technical issues. A similar idea, known as the Townland system, was explored during Operation Breakthrough by Boeing, which also looked to combine adaptable individualized units within a shared concrete framework. Although imagined and promoted as part of a greater ideal of adaptability the stacked units offered very little real flexibility as their integrated factory production hampered future changes. 

Almost half a century later, vertical systems based on mass produced units continue to be proposed as efficient dwelling strategies, but this time within social demographic dynamics that argue for their main stream use. Within this context start-ups like Kasita, a micro-unit producer, proposed their smartly designed dwellings stacked into an image of a changing urban framework again imagining the city as a mega space-frame hub for moveable dwellings.  

Skyrise Terrace model ; Tested version in Saint-Paul Minnesota ; Kasita's urban proposal