Rational and accessible universal building systems have been a quest or obsession for architects at least since the advent of industrial processes and their potential application in building construction. A universal building system can be described as a coordinated set of components. These pieces or building subassemblies can be put together in multiple variations and applied to different settings and functions. Habitually related to kit-of-parts architecture, universal building systems are intended to be applied globally. As was the case during the twentieth century, architects are again revisiting the adaptable universal building system to solve housing shortages.
Iconic examples and inspired by the potential to house the masses, both Walter Segal and Ken Isaacs circulated their ideas for universal systems through catalogues and recipe books. Today, open source methodologies are defining novel ways of distributing knowledge about building and construction. Information technology fertilizes an environment for the on-line crowd-sharing, crowd-outlining and exponential multiplying of iterations to address wide-ranging scopes and spans.
Projects like WikiHouse by Alastair Parvin or Incremental Housing by Alejandro Aravena are charting and defining an ideal of open-source crowd-sourced architecture. Both proposals aim to universally share their design strategies. Equally ambitious is Ensamble studio’s, WOHO, a universal building system research project. The multidisciplinary studio based in Madrid first proposed in their concrete kit-of-parts in 2010. A type of building infrastructure, the system is based on spatial and structural components. Large-scale building blocks make up frames that are stacked to construct generic spaces ready for inhabitants to create their own individualized interior spaces. Likely inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and theoretically linked to Habraken’s natural relationship for mass housing “supports and infill” the universal building system is a vertical rack of tube like dwellings. L-shaped prefabricated concrete beams shape floors and half walls while the same inverted L-shaped beams are inverted and attached to previous ones to shape upper half-walls and complete the dwelling box-like unit. The large girders could conceivably be manufactured in any de-localized factory setting. The resulting generic space is customizable with elements such as stairs, service cores and interior partitions added to the kit’s library or built locally with a more inhabitant-driven approach.
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| L-shaped beams and girders, image from the Ensamble Studio website |
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