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