Prefabrication experiments - 236 - drawings and representations - 07 - The weightless adaptability of the Plas-2-Point

Fostered in an industrial society and influenced by historical processes, construction has developed into the articulate assembly of disparate elements for each individual project. Technical drawings associate individual parts to a whole. The unit to whole correlation is fundamental to the conceptual language of architectural design and elucidating how elements fit together. During modernity in architecture, this unit to whole synchronisation underlined a component based and systematic layering of pieces, parts, functions and spaces. Architecture and its manufactured parts were to be easily assembled or even disassembled to be redeployed in any other contexts or to serve varying needs.

While this unit to whole connection was in essence an interpretation of industrial production and its techniques, it endorsed the notion of a universally adaptable and flexible space idealizing a democratization of architecture. Two of the main themes of this universality included minimal building footprint, keeping earthwork to a minimum, and eliminating any bearing elements restricting planning freedom. This idealization of free panning and simplicity was translated by representations that expressed three modern tenets: mobility, assembly and adaptability. 

Rendered by Marcel Breuer in the drawing sheet below, the Plas-2-Point prototype certainly checks all the parameters; An open and free space floating over two bearing elements. The house’s structural system, envisioned as a shell or wing structure included identical but mirrored roof trusses and floor trusses tapered from the outer points toward a central vertical girder or beam that transferred the loads to two vertical stone posts. The space between the inverted floor and roof structure was completely free of structural constraints and could be organized according to user needs. 

Breuer’s representation of balance and harmony is an equally modern canon. The house is symmetrical both in plan and section and could theoretically use the same components for the floor and roof structure. Although the Plas-2-Point was never produced, Breuer’s design identified and underlined the era’s zeitgeist for creative building systems inspired by a type of weightless architecture. The house’s representation also epitomized a perception of mass production - a house could be designed and its methods represented on one drawing sheet. Analogous to a patent drawing, the vision was whole and comprehensive.

Plas-2-Point prefabricated house, elevation drawings, designed by Marcel Breuer, 1942. Marcel Breuer papers, 1920-1986. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.