Prefabrication experiments - 216 - oddities - 07 - The helicopter house

New promises of mobility and more time for leisure increased excitement for travel, tourism and secondary dwellings perched above or anchored to extraordinary settings. Along with this technology-based optimism and three decades of prosperity that followed the second world war, new materials and methods provided a framework for developing a specifically unrooted architecture linked to discovery and progress. An architecture developed from these themes that has been analysed as a type of cockpit inspired architecture: designed as a control center for all dwelling needs, intended for manufacturing and adapted as an ergonomic living device. Spaces, their heights and dimensions were used to plan a virtual second skin moulded to human measurements. 

Moving architecture in the 1960s included manifestoes by Archigram but were not limited to utopian city machines or walking megastructures. The mobile home carried on a trailer or self-propelled represented a type of prefabricated dwelling that eventually inspired grander forms of moveable houses. Guy Rottier’s helicopter “maison de vacance” or flying holiday home characterises this uniting of industrial potentials with architectural reverie. Rottier an architect and engineer trained in Europe during the years following the second world war worked briefly for Le Corbusier in the late 1950s and was introduced to Michel Ragon, a famous French modernist historian. 

Well versed in modernism, his holiday house is a true representation of the era’s machine aesthetic. This version of the capsule house bridged helicopter technology and fiberglass monocoque construction. The dwelling was literally moulded into a helicopter cockpit providing spaces for controlling flight, sleeping and eating. A flight range of 50-100 km based on the dwelling’s fuel tank, it was envisioned as a means of leaving the city and gaining access to isolate sites that were inaccessible for normal housing types. A 15 m² moulded GRP hull with overall dimensions of 3 m. x 5m., the dwelling’s furnishings and equipment were completely self-contained and planned to serve a small family. Rottier’s vision exhibited at the Salon des Metiers d’Art in Paris in 1964 was designed in collaboration with Rottier’s contemporary Charles Barberis. The helicopter house suggested a futuristic vision of democratized flight and setting up house wherever one could fly to. 

Prefabrication experiments - 215 - oddities - 06 - The cabin for folks – Volks-kabin

A member of The Architect’s Collaborative founded by Walter Gropius in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1946, architect Edward A. Cuetera designed a number of mid-century modern prefab houses based on a timber construction system similar to Karl Koch’s well-known Techbuilt homes. Cuetera through his company, The Core House Corporation developed the Core-Plus X house: a small modular design organized around a prefabricated service core which included a kitchen wall and an adjacent bathroom space.  A (x-variable) number of 12x12 units of flexible spaces could surround the core potentially creating a large number of adaptable plans on simple parameters (Core plus (x)). 

Cuetera and his company contributed to a fertile hub of prefabrication exploration in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. A number of prototypes were designed and built by The Core House Corporation in the region.  The timber post and beam structure was completed with modular panels of various materials dimensioned on the division of a primary 3,6 m grid into smaller interchangeable components. Based on the same principles Gropius had argued for «variable architecture based on pre-manufactured components to realize the economies of repetition» Cuetera also promoted the “volks-kabin” a cabin for everyman. 

A modified A-frame or butler frame, the raised triangular vault structure was designed to be made from timber beams (bent roof beams) placed on a linear grid distanced about 1,8 m. The arched triangles spanned 5,5 m to create a free one directional plan. The kit-of-parts system would be delivered with erection instructions and could be built on a simple raft foundation. The roof and wall envelope, continuous 2x6 timber planking also braced the pointed frames against lateral loads. Entirely bolted together, one can easily imagine these simply built cabins as modest homes and clusters within a do-it-yourself community.  It is not clear if any of these “volks-kabins” were actually built, however a number of Cuetera’s Core-Plus X Houses and one-off prototypes were built and published in architectural journals. 

Brattle street in Cambridge Massachusetts was the setting for the foundation of the Core house corporation, and numerous modern inspired explorations, as The Architects Collaborative designed 42 brattle street in Cambridge where the firm worked and inspired modernism in their community.

The Volks-kabin system 

Prefabrication experiments - 214 - oddities - 05 - Tetrahedral City for One Million People

Large scale buildings made from repetitive geometric components have always been part of prefabrication’s kit-of-part approach to building. Using a modular structural unit in a type of building block assembly for architecture and even urbanism was highlighted by many during the twentieth century. A notable modular unit, the patented octet truss explored by Buckminster Fuller as a three-cell unit of tetrahedra could pack and structure any space while reducing structural weight. Illustrated for domes, roofs or free-formed structures, the octet truss was defined as the elemental constituent of large spanning structures. Its basic unit, a pyramid composed of 4 equilateral triangular faces was aligned, stacked or juxtaposed with any number of related pyramids to span vertically or horizontally. 

The octet truss’ largest projection came in the form of The Tetrahedral City. One of Fuller’s unbuilt visions, the mega structure was mandated by Japanese businessman Matsutaro Shoriki to serve as a floating city in the ocean to accommodate increasing urbanization. The floating machine was designed by Fuller and his associate Shoji Sadao as a complete floating ecosystem where salt-water desalination, energy production, food production, and waste recycling were all part of closed loop propelled by nuclear energy. Approximately 2,6 km high the tetrahedra would shelter one million people within 300 000 adaptable and flexible flats. Each tetrahedra terraced unit would frame a private space into which owners could deploy their own moveable capsule homes. Housing units could be moored to the framework or moved to other areas of the structure during their lifecycle.

The colossal tetrahedra rested on a 61-meter deep reinforced concrete foundation. This floating harbor measuring 3,2 km per side could accommodate ships, loading docks, transport barges and airplanes - a proper city port. The raft foundation acted as a shock absorber adjusting to seismic activity. Every 50th level of the 200 story structure would be an open deck area letting sunlight and air into the heart of the massive tetrahedron. Triton city, a second version, also designed by Fuller and Sadao, was a smaller version designed as a test module for tetrahedral city. Both remained unbuilt and certainly avant-garde even by today’s standards. The floating cities were envisioned as artificial land masses floating permanently in the ocean. 

Elevation and section through the Tetrahedral City